Current: 5.5 years of experience
Location: Bangalore
I applied through their career page and got a mail from recruiter within two days to schedule intro call.
Intro call (30mins - Feb week 1):
A very casual call. Introductions, expectations, tech background and process details.
Codility Online Test (125mins - Feb week 2):
This had 3 questions - 1 java based, 1 sql based and 1 DSA. I could get output to DSA and SQL based questions and partial output on java based.
Feedback: I was informed in 4 days that I have cleared the test.
Technical Interview (1hr - Feb week 4):
This interview had everything on the tech stack I worked. More on microservices, HTTP, REST, Databases, SQL, NoSQL databases, Java based questions on threads, memory, GC, patterns. A short discussion about my current role and project as well.
Feedback: Cleared for final set of interviews.
The next 4 rounds had no elimination inbetween. They were scheduled on two consecutive days.
Final Round, Interview 1 - General Tech (1hr - Mar week 2 - Day 1):
I was asked to design To-do list.
There were questions about AWS cost estimations. If you were to build an app with so much of data, estimate cost.
Then there was general discussion about my current project, role and few questions on design patterns. This round ended well within 45mins.
Final Round, Interview 2 - HR Interview (30mins - Mar week 2 - Day 1):
Why Zalando, Germany, Berlin and those kind of HR questions.
Scenario questions like tell me a time where you had a bad co-worker, met tight deadline and such questions.
Final Round, Interview 3 - Coding (1hr - Mar week 2 - Day 2):
Find two elements whose sum=k in a rotated sorted array.
Mentioned hashmap solution, time=O(n), space=O(n).
Then gave two pointer approach, by searching peak in rotated sorted array using binary search. This reduces space to O(1). Wrote working code for this in google doc.
Final Round, Interview 4 - System Design (1hr - Mar week 2 - Day 2):
Was asked to design web crawler given set of links. Those were instagram profiles and had to crawl user information.
Feedback Call (30mins - Mar week 3):
I had the Delivery Hero offer with numbers by this time and mentioned the same to recruiter and set my expectations straight to the recruiter before this call. But unfortunately, Zalando offered C6 instead of C7 and the pay was 6k euros less than DH and 15k less than my expectations. I was not given the reason for offering C6. All I got was interviewers felt its C6 and I will be promoted in first cycle within 6months. I was completely annoyed by this kind of reasoning. Recruiter kept on telling I will be promoted for sure, this is the best offer and I should accept it. He also tried convincing me by saying they are building something big like AWS or something and should I be joining a tech gaint or a mere delivery company (DH). I did not like the audacity of the recruiter, calling DH a mere delivery company while this so called tech gaint was not able to match the offer!
Zalando is a pretty stable company with presence almost all over the Europe. Its a well known company as well. Their benefits include first month accomodation, 6k relocation support, Zalando share shop, 40% off on Zalando products. The work being offered was also good from what I understood. The team was responsible for most of the revenue of Zalando. I was tempted to join, but was not sure about work life balance as I read many bad reviews on Blind. I had asked for a 30mins talk with hiring manager and he was too busy and they could only schedule a 15min call. I was not very impressed in that call, he did not even care to ask anything about me, all he did was selling what the team does in the entire call. He was very formal and not a fun manager to work with at all (This was my impression from the 15mins I got to talk with him. I may be wrong, ofcourse). I did not like the downlevel for no reason as well and the numbers were also lesser than my expectations. I did accept initially, but declined later within two days even before I got the contract. Recruiter later tried to convince by setting up three follow up calls with 7-8 days gap inbetween. Effectively I got a month time to decide on the offer, but the decision was made!
Other interview experiences: https://leetcode.com/discuss/interview-experience?currentPage=1&orderBy=hot&query=&tag=anonymousengineer