BigBasket (a Tata group company) runs India's grocery e-commerce at heavy scale across express and scheduled delivery, dark stores, and BB Now, so its SWE loop pushes hard on system design and backend depth.
Expect 4 to 5 rounds: an online assessment or DSA screen, one or two coding rounds, a system design round, and a hiring manager round. Design questions are grocery-specific: inventory and slot availability across dark stores, cart and pricing at peak load, delivery routing, and handling perishables and stockouts, so you should reason about consistency, caching, and read-heavy catalog traffic with concrete numbers.
About BigBasket
BigBasket is India's largest online grocery platform, now a Tata Digital subsidiary after the Tata Group acquired a majority stake in 2021. It serves 30+ cities with express grocery delivery (BB Now: 10-minute delivery) and scheduled slots.
Resume screen: backend or full-stack scale experience and strong fundamentals help; referrals improve odds
Online assessment or DSA screen: medium DSA problems and problem solving
Coding rounds: data structures, complexity, and clean implementation
System design round: grocery-scale architecture with inventory, slots, and delivery
Hiring manager round: ownership, trade-off reasoning, and team fit
Online assessment or DSA screen (60 to 90 min)
medium DSA problems on arrays, strings, hashmaps, and trees or graphs.
Coding rounds (45 to 60 min each)
implement solutions with correct edge-case handling and discuss time and space complexity.
System design (60 min)
design inventory, slot availability, or cart at scale across dark stores; defend consistency, caching, and availability trade-offs with numbers.
Hiring manager (30 to 45 min)
ownership stories, trade-off reasoning, and fit for a high-scale grocery platform.
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Sign up free: unlock all questionsThe typical BigBasket recruitment process has 5 stages: Resume screen: backend or full-stack scale experience and strong fundamentals help; referrals improve odds → Online assessment or DSA screen: medium DSA problems and problem solving → Coding rounds: data structures, complexity, and clean implementation → System design round: grocery-scale architecture with inventory, slots, and delivery → Hiring manager round: ownership, trade-off reasoning, and team fit.
BigBasket typically conducts 4 interview rounds: Online assessment or DSA screen (60 to 90 min): medium DSA problems on arrays, strings, hashmaps, and trees or graphs.; Coding rounds (45 to 60 min each): implement solutions with correct edge-case handling and discuss time and space complexity.; System design (60 min): design inventory, slot availability, or cart at scale across dark stores; defend consistency, caching, and availability trade-offs with numbers.; Hiring manager (30 to 45 min): ownership stories, trade-off reasoning, and fit for a high-scale grocery platform..
HireStepX recommends the Scale-and-consistency design framework for this type of interview: Estimate QPS and data size, choose the store and cache, then defend consistency and availability trade-offs for inventory, slots, and cart.
To answer this question well, HireStepX recommends the Scale-and-consistency design approach: Estimate QPS and data size, choose the store and cache, then defend consistency and availability trade-offs for inventory, slots, and cart. Ground your answer in a specific real example from your own experience.
To answer this question well, HireStepX recommends the Scale-and-consistency design approach: Estimate QPS and data size, choose the store and cache, then defend consistency and availability trade-offs for inventory, slots, and cart. Ground your answer in a specific real example from your own experience.
To answer this question well, HireStepX recommends the Scale-and-consistency design approach: Estimate QPS and data size, choose the store and cache, then defend consistency and availability trade-offs for inventory, slots, and cart. Ground your answer in a specific real example from your own experience.
To answer this question well, HireStepX recommends the Scale-and-consistency design approach: Estimate QPS and data size, choose the store and cache, then defend consistency and availability trade-offs for inventory, slots, and cart. Ground your answer in a specific real example from your own experience.
To answer this question well, HireStepX recommends the Scale-and-consistency design approach: Estimate QPS and data size, choose the store and cache, then defend consistency and availability trade-offs for inventory, slots, and cart. Ground your answer in a specific real example from your own experience.