From our research
What this interview looks like
Zomato typically starts engineering hiring with a coding screen, either an online test for campus candidates or a one-hour live coding round for experienced hires, followed by one or two data-structures rounds, a design round that is low-level design for early-career engineers and high-level design for senior ones, and a hiring-manager conversation.
HR or a people-team member covers fitment and compensation at the end. Interviews are mostly conducted by engineers and engineering managers from the team hiring, over video, and the loop is usually completed within one to two weeks, though timings vary by team.
Business analyst, product analyst and growth roles typically see a take-home or live case on a Zomato or Blinkit metric, an SQL and Excel round, a case or guesstimate conversation with the business lead, and a culture-fit round. The Blinkit side often adds a round on dark-store operations.
Interviewers tend to probe ownership of outcomes, comfort with ambiguity and whether the candidate has actually used the product and noticed its rough edges.
ExamPilot compresses the loop into a 17-minute panel: HR screen, a hiring-manager round on your work and a Zomato scenario, a role round in your chosen specialisation, a short STAR behavioural round and a closing on expectations, scored on role knowledge, problem solving, communication and attitude.
How it is weighted
Every round is a filter, and the design and hiring-manager rounds decide the level offered: candidates have reported being offered SDE 1 instead of SDE 2 after a thin design round. Here each round is scored against the corporate rubric (role knowledge 30, problem solving 25, communication 25, attitude 20).
Who this is for
Candidates who have cleared Zomato's coding screen, which is typically an online test or a live one-hour problem-solving round, and have been scheduled for the onsite or video loop. Experienced candidates are usually asked for a resume walk-through and one project they owned end to end before the design round.
Process pattern as of recent cycles; the exact round count varies by team.
The panel focuses on
- Data structures and algorithms talked through aloud: brute force first, then the optimised approach and its complexity
- Low-level design of a delivery or ordering flow with clean entities, interfaces and one trade-off defended
- High-level design for scale: order placement during a cricket-final peak, delivery partner assignment, live tracking
- Databases, caching and queues in practice, including idempotency and what happens when a payment or order call is retried
- Your project: what you personally built, what broke in production, and what you would redo
- Why Zomato over other consumer-internet companies, the pace of shipping, and on-call expectations stated honestly
Step 1
Pick your domain
The expert on the panel probes these areas at the level of this role. Optional here; you can choose during setup.
Step 2
Choose how you want to be interviewed
1:1 interview
One interviewer runs every round and adapts the focus as you go. Lower pressure; ideal for a first attempt.
Mr. Vikram Malhotra
Hiring manager
Panel interview · 3 members
Most realisticEach member leads their own round and hands over to the next. They hear each other, so a weak answer will be revisited.
Ms. Sana Merchant
HR member
Mr. Vikram Malhotra
Hiring manager
Mr. Nikhil Agarwal
Technical lead
What to expect
5 rounds · 17 minutes
A private-sector hiring loop compressed into one sitting, the way most Indian companies run it: HR screen → hiring-manager round on your actual work → role/technical round led by a lead → communication & behavioural (STAR) round → closing on expectations and your questions.
Works for software, product, sales, finance, HR, support and campus hiring by swapping the role bank.
- Round 1
HR screen
· 3:00Understand background, motivation for this role and company, and basic logistics; check that the resume story holds together.
Ms. Sana Merchant2–3 questionsup to 1 follow-up each - Round 2
Hiring-manager round
· 4:00Assess ownership, judgement and how the candidate actually works: what they shipped, closed or ran, their specific part, and how they would approach this job.
Mr. Vikram Malhotra2–3 questionsup to 2 follow-ups each - Round 3
Role / technical round
· 5:00Test role knowledge and problem-solving in the chosen specialisation: fundamentals, one scenario to think through aloud, and trade-offs.
Mr. Nikhil Agarwal3–4 questionsup to 2 follow-ups each - Round 4
Communication & behavioural round
· 3:00Assess collaboration, conflict handling, resilience and clarity of expression through Situation–Task–Action–Result examples.
Mr. Vikram Malhotra2–2 questionsup to 1 follow-up each - Round 5
Expectations & closing
· 2:00Cover practical expectations and let the candidate ask questions; close professionally.
Ms. Sana Merchant1–2 questions
Meet the panel
Your AI interviewers
Distinct personas, voices and questioning styles, briefed on this role.
Ms. Sana Merchant
ChairHR member
Talent Partner, consumer-internet and fintech startups (Bengaluru and Gurugram); runs HR screens and offer conversations for tech, product and business roles
Warm, quick, candid about startup realities.
Female voice · 3 languages
Mr. Vikram Malhotra
Hiring manager
Engineering manager / Regional manager (hiring manager)
Direct, outcome-focused, fair but demanding.
Male voice · 2 languages
Mr. Nikhil Agarwal
Technical lead
Staff Engineer, consumer internet (food delivery, quick commerce and marketplaces); design-round and bar-raiser interviewer
Curious, fast, collaborative, allergic to memorised answers.
Male voice · 3 languages
Languages
Answer in the language you think in
The panel asks in your chosen language. Switch mid-answer if you like.
- English
- Hinglish (Hindi + English)Hinglish
How scoring works
A report you can act on
Every round is scored on the rubric
Each interviewer scores only the criteria their round covers. Weights add up to your overall score out of 100.
Only what you actually said counts
Feedback quotes your own answers. Rounds you skip show as “Not assessed” rather than a zero.
Communication is always measured
Fluency, clarity, confidence and structure are tracked across the whole interview, in any language.
Pass mark, then a plan
You see the pass mark for this interview, your gaps, and the courses that close them fastest.
Scored on
- Role knowledge30%
Depth and accuracy of role/domain knowledge; understands the tools, concepts and trade-offs of the job; grounds claims in real work.
- Problem solving & structure25%
Breaks problems down, asks clarifying questions, reasons about trade-offs and edge cases, structures answers (context, action, result).
- Communication25%
Clear, concise, confident; listens and answers the question asked; adapts the explanation to the listener; professional register.
- Culture & attitude20%
Ownership, honesty about limits, coachability, collaboration, motivation for this role and realistic expectations.
Pass mark 65 / 100 · Corporate interview — HR, hiring manager & role round (panel)
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