I applied through an employee referral. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Walmart
Interview
The interview process was long, tedious, unorganized, and annoying.
I spoke with a technical recruiter through a referral who immediately began to downplay my skills and experience in a passive aggressive way. I was then connected with an extremely socially awkward engineer for a tech screen, which took a week to schedule since the recruiting coordinator (different from the technical recruiter) kept moving things around last minute. After that, I didn't hear back for two weeks so I pinged them again only to receive an email in the context of "we didn't forget you" (yeah right). I was scheduled for another tech screen which was a much better experience than the previous.
After this, I was asked to tech screen with the same person I had already spoken to in the first round. I emailed to find out why this was the case and heard back saying that they would find out what the "real next steps" were. I waited one week, didn't hear back, and took a competing offer that was much more beneficial for me. I still haven't heard back from Walmart.
Looking back, I feel like I gained a clearer understanding of the process, even though I ultimately turned down the offer. The technical rounds were straightforward, featuring an implementation question on an LRU cache and a system design question about a rate limiter for an API. What helped me a lot was the walkthroughs for system design I went through on PracHub, which made those types of questions feel familiar. Overall, it was an easy experience, but I just didn't feel it was the right fit for me.
Interview questions [2]
Question 1
Implement an LRU cache with O(1) get and put using a hash map plus doubly linked list
First, standard short phone call with recruiter. Then a 1-hour interview with an engineer on the team, asked about technical experience and background, and did a live coding assessment via video call. Fairly standard Leetcode style questions
Intense but rewarding — the interview for the Software Engineer position at Walmart Labs was tougher than I anticipated. The technical rounds included an LRU Cache implementation question where I had to articulate my design thoughts on thread safety, followed by a complex system design for a real-time inventory service. What made a difference in my prep were the company-specific prompts I found on prachub.com; they really helped me understand the types of questions I might face. Despite the challenging nature of the interviews, I ultimately received an offer but chose to decline.