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E-commerceProduct company

Mercari

Technology company running a marketplace app for buying and selling secondhand goods, and the Merpay mobile payments service.

Not known6 stage process documentedFounded 2013
Headquarters

Tokyo, Japan

Headcount

1,000 to 5,000

1,000 to 4,999 people
Work model

Not known

Hiring

Not known

Not enough signal to say. Check the careers page directly.
Where to apply
Careers pageWebsite

Ask for a referral to Mercari

A referral only means something if the person giving it can actually speak to your work. I will refer you where I know someone on the inside and your profile genuinely fits the role, and I will tell you plainly when I cannot. Either way you get an answer, and a straight one.

  • I read every request. A reply takes a few days, sometimes longer.
  • I will not refer someone for a role their profile does not fit. It wastes your time and costs me the contact.
  • Where I cannot refer you, I will say why, and point you at the way in that does work.
  • Nothing you send here is shared with anyone without you agreeing to it first.

If you found the opening, paste it. It tells me which team you mean.

A Drive, Dropbox or personal-site link is fine. Make sure it opens without a request for access, or I cannot read it.

At least a short paragraph. This is what I would be putting my name behind, so specifics beat adjectives.

Comma separated, up to six. Things you would be happy to be tested on.

How they hire

Interviews usually last 30 to 60 minutes, up to about 90 with interpretation, and run on Google Meet in English, Japanese or both. A casual chat with current staff may be offered during the process.

  1. 1

    Document screening

    Official +1
    Application screenRemote

    CV in any format. Engineers reviewing it look at experience and technical skills, including GitHub where available.

  2. 2

    Coding test

    Official +1
    Online testRemote

    An online test taken when convenient: solve computer science and maths problems by writing programs that turn given inputs into expected outputs. Required for certain positions.

    AlgorithmsCoding
  3. 3

    Technical interview with engineers

    Official +1
    Technical interviewRemote

    Mercari engineers assess whether your skills meet the role’s requirements.

  4. 4

    Manager interview

    Official
    Hiring managerRemote

    A manager judges culture fit.

  5. 5

    Executive interview

    Official
    Senior leadershipRemote

    A senior leader looks for anything missed earlier and whether you would contribute in line with the mission and values.

  6. 6

    Offer meeting and reference checks

    Official +2
    Offer

    References may be collected through a third-party form filled in by former managers or colleagues.

What comes up

Recurring themes from candidate accounts, not a question bank. Nobody is served by leaked question lists, least of all you in the interview.

  • Behavioural questions in STAR form

    Official +1

    Interviews use the Situation, Task, Action, Result method to test whether your past actions match the values Go Bold, All for One and Be a Pro.

  • Programming against defined inputs and outputs

    Official

    The coding test checks computer science fundamentals through programs that must produce expected output.

Worth reading before you apply

From the Sefism resource library, matched to the rounds above.

Roadmap
Coding Interview Playbook

A structured learning path through coding interview preparation that brings together data structures and algorithms fundamentals, recursion and the pattern-based approach to coding questions in one order. It totals 77 chapters and 1,054 lessons, with quizzes, flashcards and a certificate. Use it when you have plenty of material but no clear plan for what to study first.

  • Job search
  • DSA
  • Career
Design Gurus · Interview Prep · 3 to 6 months
SubscriptionDetails
Roadmap
FAANG Coding Interview Roadmap

A bundle of five company-specific question courses covering the problems most often reported from Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, Google and Oracle coding rounds, each split into easy, medium and hard sets with worked solutions. It suits candidates who already know the core patterns and have a loop booked at one of these companies, and want to rehearse on the questions those interviewers are known to ask.

  • Job search
  • DSA
  • Career
Design Gurus · Interview Prep · 3 to 4 months · Advanced
SubscriptionDetails
Course
Grokking Tech Salary Negotiations

A practical course on negotiating compensation in tech, from preparing and building a strategy to specific tactics, the full package beyond base salary, handling multiple offers and asking for a raise. It has tailored sections for fresh graduates and experienced engineers. It suits anyone with an offer coming, and anyone who has ever accepted the first number out of discomfort.

  • Career
  • Job search
Design Gurus · Career Growth · 1 week
SubscriptionDetails
Roadmap
Engineering Manager Interview Roadmap

A sequenced path of six text-based courses for the engineering manager interview loop, combining coding, system design, microservices patterns, people management scenarios and senior leadership questions. It suits engineers moving into management and managers changing companies, who need to prepare for both the technical and the leadership rounds without piecing a plan together themselves.

  • Career
  • Leadership
  • Job search
Design Gurus · Career Growth · 2 to 3 months · Advanced
SubscriptionDetails
Platform
Hacker101

Hacker101 is HackerOne's free web security training hub, combining video lessons with a hands-on capture-the-flag exercise, aimed at both programmers curious about bug bounty work and more experienced security professionals. It is entirely free with no account paywall, and pairs naturally with reading HackerOne's own vulnerability disclosure guidelines before attempting any real-world bug bounty programme. Bugcrowd runs a similarly free alternative, Bugcrowd University, worth knowing about even though this entry focuses on Hacker101.

  • Career
  • Job search
  • Testing
HackerOne · Other · Beginner
FreeDetails
Book
The Pragmatic Programmer

A book by Dave Thomas and Andy Hunt about the craft of software development rather than any language: responsibility, avoiding duplication, orthogonality, tracer bullets, automation, testing, debugging and working in teams. The 2019 20th anniversary edition was substantially rewritten, with new material on security and concurrency. It suits developers a few years into their careers, when the language is no longer the hard part and habits start to matter most.

  • Career
  • CS fundamentals
  • Testing
Hunt and Thomas · Other · 4 to 6 weeks · Intermediate
About $45Details
Browse the whole library

What it pays

Nothing collected for this company yet, and nothing worth guessing at. A made-up range is worse than no range because people negotiate against it.

Add to the Mercari page

This library is only as good as what people who have been through it are willing to share. Most of these companies have no hiring process documented anywhere, and one account of what the rounds actually were is worth more than anything I can research from the outside.

What are you adding?

This decides how the claim is labelled on the page. Only someone representing the company can produce an “official” label, and I check that separately.

Year and month.

Comma separated topics, not the questions themselves.

Round by round is ideal: what each one was, how long, remote or in person, and what it covered.

Credit

Anonymous is the default. If you keep it anonymous, nothing identifying you reaches the page: it is published as a candidate account and your name stays with me. Never send anything covered by an NDA, and never send a take-home or a question paper.

Universities they recruit from

No sourced university links yet. A campus drive, a career fair appearance or an internship partnership is what puts a university here.

Add to the Mercari page

This library is only as good as what people who have been through it are willing to share. Most of these companies have no hiring process documented anywhere, and one account of what the rounds actually were is worth more than anything I can research from the outside.

What are you adding?

This decides how the claim is labelled on the page. Only someone representing the company can produce an “official” label, and I check that separately.

Year and month.

Comma separated topics, not the questions themselves.

Round by round is ideal: what each one was, how long, remote or in person, and what it covered.

Credit

Anonymous is the default. If you keep it anonymous, nothing identifying you reaches the page: it is published as a candidate account and your name stays with me. Never send anything covered by an NDA, and never send a take-home or a question paper.

How to actually get seen

Prepare concrete STAR stories that show each of Mercari’s three values, since every round probes them. Link a GitHub profile or past projects in the CV, as engineers read these at screening.

Sources

Whole profile last checked 2026-09-22.

Interviewed at Mercari? Fill in what changed.

Processes change, rounds get added, tests get replaced. If what you went through was different from what is on this page, tell me and I will update it.

Want me to refer you here?

Send me the role, your CV and a few honest paragraphs on why you fit it. Where I know someone inside and your profile matches, I will make the introduction. Where I cannot, I will tell you why and point you at the route that does work. You get an answer either way.

Ask for a referral to Mercari

A referral only means something if the person giving it can actually speak to your work. I will refer you where I know someone on the inside and your profile genuinely fits the role, and I will tell you plainly when I cannot. Either way you get an answer, and a straight one.

  • I read every request. A reply takes a few days, sometimes longer.
  • I will not refer someone for a role their profile does not fit. It wastes your time and costs me the contact.
  • Where I cannot refer you, I will say why, and point you at the way in that does work.
  • Nothing you send here is shared with anyone without you agreeing to it first.

If you found the opening, paste it. It tells me which team you mean.

A Drive, Dropbox or personal-site link is fine. Make sure it opens without a request for access, or I cannot read it.

At least a short paragraph. This is what I would be putting my name behind, so specifics beat adjectives.

Comma separated, up to six. Things you would be happy to be tested on.

Add to the Mercari page

This library is only as good as what people who have been through it are willing to share. Most of these companies have no hiring process documented anywhere, and one account of what the rounds actually were is worth more than anything I can research from the outside.

What are you adding?

This decides how the claim is labelled on the page. Only someone representing the company can produce an “official” label, and I check that separately.

Year and month.

Comma separated topics, not the questions themselves.

Round by round is ideal: what each one was, how long, remote or in person, and what it covered.

Credit

Anonymous is the default. If you keep it anonymous, nothing identifying you reaches the page: it is published as a candidate account and your name stays with me. Never send anything covered by an NDA, and never send a take-home or a question paper.

Work with me

Stuck on something specific?

Writing only gets you so far. If you want an answer to your situation rather than the general case, book a session and we will work through it together. Sessions are free for approved Sefism members, and a few slots open each week.

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