I applied online. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Rakuten (Tokyo) in Sep 2024
Interview
The entire interview process was rigorous. I applied through the rakuten recruiting website directly. Initially, nothing was done with my application. It was only after I tried to contact someone from rakuten from an e-mail I found in the candidate page of the internal recruitment website where you logged in, that something happened. I suddenly got invited to do a codility test. Advice to potential job seekers: Send an e-mail to this very well hidden e-mail of the candidate home page after a week of hearing nothing!
I prepared for the codility test by studying all the material at codility. It turns out (rightly so) that you only need to know algorithmic counting and array, string manipulation. It is still a nice exercise tohave a basic understanding of algorithms. I passed the codility test.
After the codility test, I got invited to the 1st interview. This interview as somebody else has also put it in glassdoor, full of basic SQL questions. See questions below for some of those that I still remember. There was also a live coding session. See interview questions below for details. Finally, there were some behavioral questions. The few I still remember are in the interview questions below.
I passed the first interview. I got invited to take an English TOIEC test. Which I originally planned to do if I passed the second interview but I ended up NOT passing the second interview.
The second interview is a with a data team lead. He has lots of questions related to your work experience. See below for details on the questions I still remember.
After the second interview I heard from the interviewer that he was positive on me. Two days later, I got a rejection letter. The only reason I can think of my inexperienced response to his duplicate row data pipeline question. I wrote this review here such that the next guy can get the job. Glassdoor helped me prepare fairly well for the interview process but I still got rejected even if I got some of the hard questions fully prepared. I found out later that I was not prepared to answer system design like questions. Interviewer also thought that I missed data operations experience. Since it looked like I did not have that much experience doing pipeline performance tuning.
These are areas I could improve in for the next interview.
Keep interviewing. At some point there will be a company that fits you....
I will be looking for my next job outside of rakuten for now.
Interview questions [13]
Question 1
Codility task 1: Hard leetcode SQL question. (Just practice a few hard leetcode SQL questions). They are not hard if you practice a few.
Interview 1: Live coding 1: You get some csv text. You need to parse it and then generate a query to calculate something. This is a medium hard SQL question.
I applied through college or university. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Rakuten (Hyderābād) in Dec 2025
Interview
Currently i am studying in IIT Hyderabad, Rakuten came to my clg for campus placements, 1st round is resume shortlist, 2nd round is dsa round, 3rd round is tech interview, i went till round 3, over 220 applied and only 2 vacancies, for the 3rd round interview they selected only 8 ppl, luckily i was 1 among them, but i didnt get selected yet
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
What's the 1 problem you faced while fine tunning the model
I applied online. The process took 1 week. I interviewed at Rakuten (Tokyo) in Aug 2025
Interview
asked relevant experiences and behavioral questions, no technical tests. require Japanese and English but interview in English with assistant manager and manager. require hybrid work. permanent position but will work with contract employee also.
The interview covers background, past projects, and problem-solving skills. Expect discussions on data analysis, technical expertise, and business impact. It may include SQL tests, case studies, and stakeholder communication assessments.