IKEA interview, inside Ingka Digital and the grandparent round.

These are the steps Ingka lists on tech.ingka.com and join.ingka.com, in its own order. Ingka does not say how long each round lasts or how the technical screening is run, so the details in each row come from candidate reports where we could find them, marked as reported. Senior roles and data roles report a take-home task between the manager chat and the technical round.

The grandparent interview is a meeting with your future manager's manager. Ingka lists it after the technical screening and says it is crucial to know your future mentor, who will play a big part in shaping your team's direction. Ingka does not publish how long it lasts or what it scores. A Glassdoor report for a senior data role at Ingka describes it as the third round, with the manager's manager, after a take-home and a technical round. Because IKEA says it looks for people's values before competence and experience, expect most of the hour to be about how you work and why you want to work there.

• Why IKEA, and why now?: Have one reason tied to the IKEA vision of a better everyday life for the many people, and one tied to the team's work, such as ikea.com, fulfilment or store systems. Keep it under two minutes and specific to Ingka.
• Stories that show the values: Prepare one short story each for cost-consciousness, give and take responsibility, togetherness and renew and improve. Spend most of each story on what you did and end with a result. Say "we" when the team did it and "I" for your own part.
• How you see the team's direction: This person sets direction for several teams. Ask what they want the area to look like in two years, then say where you could help. It shows you are thinking past your own tickets.
• A mistake and what you changed: IKEA's values ask people to dare to make mistakes. Pick a real one with a cost, own it plainly, and spend the last third on what you do differently now.
• How you grow and help others grow: The grandparent is described as a mentor. Name what you want to learn in the next year and how you have helped someone else learn, so the conversation can be about development on both sides.
• Your questions for them: Ask about the team's biggest challenge this year, how decisions are made across teams, and how they measure success. Two or three good questions are enough.

Calibrd's mock interview can rehearse the grandparent interview aloud, with values and motivation questions and a debrief on each answer, so you can practise before the real conversation.

IKEA publishes eight values, and its values page says it looks for people's values before competence and experience. The grandparent interview and the behavioural questions come back to them. In an interview they look like this:

• Togetherness: trusting each other and pulling in the same direction, which in an interview means stories about a team, told with "we" where it was a team effort
• Caring for people and planet: thinking about who your work affects, including co-workers, customers and the environment
• Cost-consciousness: making more from less without hurting quality, such as cutting cloud cost or reusing what already exists
• Simplicity: a down-to-earth way of working that stays close to reality, so plain answers and simple designs
• Renew and improve: always looking for a better way, with a concrete example of something you changed
• Different with a meaning: questioning existing solutions, trying things and daring to make mistakes, then saying what you learned
• Give and take responsibility: owning a problem without being asked, and trusting others with real responsibility
• Lead by example: leadership as an action, which you show through what you did, whatever your title

Few candidates have written up Ingka's technical rounds, so the questions below are our own practice questions. They follow the published steps, IKEA's eight values, the stack in Ingka's job ads and the reported take-home and build-a-system rounds.

Reported averages from Levels.fyi for IKEA in Sweden, read on 5 October 2026. Levels.fyi labels them IKEA without saying whether each one is Ingka or Inter IKEA, and the bonus is close to zero at every level, so base salary is nearly the whole package. The Ingka and Inter IKEA job ads we read did not post a pay range.

Software engineer salary in Stockholm, by level and by employer →

1. Check whether the ad is from Ingka Group or Inter IKEA, because the two run separate hiring and only Ingka publishes its steps.
2. Read IKEA's eight values and prepare one short story for each of cost-consciousness, give and take responsibility, togetherness and renew and improve.
3. Prepare a two-minute answer to why IKEA and why this team, tied to the vision of a better everyday life for the many people.
4. Ask the recruiter what the technical screening is for your role: a take-home, a live build or a design discussion.
5. If you get a take-home, keep it simple, write a short README with your trade-offs, and be ready to explain every choice in the follow-up round.
6. Practise building a small system out loud: split it into services, say how they talk, and handle a failure.
7. Learn the stack in the ad. Ingka's Amsterdam full stack ad names React, Node.js, Google Cloud and Terraform; Inter IKEA's Malmö ad names Next.js, .NET and Azure.
8. For the grandparent interview, prepare questions about the area's direction and your own development, and treat it as a two-way conversation.
9. Send your CV in English and apply through the job ad, because Ingka says it does not accept applications by email.

This guide covers engineering, data and product hiring at Ingka Digital, the digital organisation of Ingka Group, with a short section on Inter IKEA. IKEA store and service office roles follow their own steps. For management and leadership roles the loop is similar but the bar shifts to people, delivery and strategy, so pair it with the leadership interview prep hub. The bar for your exact role comes from the role-by-role guides, and the prep that actually transfers is spoken, so run a mock interview before the real one.

Also interviewing at Booking.com, Zalando or Delivery Hero? Their guides follow the same format, from the first screen to the offer.

• 01Tech at Ingka, careersthe six hiring steps from first call to offer, the technical screening with tasks to solve, the grandparent interview, the four tech hubs, and four open roles, read 5 October 2026.
• 02Ingka, join us careers pagethe same steps in the same order, and the hubs Hubhult (Malmö), Amshult (Amsterdam), Banyanhult (Bengaluru) and Madhult (Madrid), read 5 October 2026.
• 03Tech at Ingka, young talentsinterns across digital areas, thesis students each January in the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden, residency rule, and six-month accelerator programmes, read 5 October 2026.
• 04IKEA, culture and valuesthe eight IKEA values and the line that IKEA looks for people's values before competence and experience, read 5 October 2026.
• 05Ingka Group, Annual Summary and Sustainability Report FY25EUR 41.5 billion revenue, EUR 1.4 billion net income, 166,458 co-workers, 739 million store visits and 4.0 billion online visits for 1 September 2024 to 31 August 2025.
• 06Ingka Group, who we areIKEA retail in 32 countries, about 90% of IKEA retail sales, worldwide e-commerce and digital solutions, foundation ownership.
• 07IKEA jobs, search for software engineer26 results on 5 October 2026, 11 in Sweden, mixing Ingka and Inter IKEA roles.
• 08IKEA job ad, Full Stack Software Engineer, Fulfilment & Core Services, Amsterdam (posted 24 September 2026)React, Node.js, Google Cloud, Terraform, event-driven architecture, CVs in English and no applications by email; no pay range.
• 09Inter IKEA job ad, Software Engineer, Range Operations, Malmö (posted 29 September 2026)Next.js, .NET and Azure, office-based in Malmö, and recruiting on values, competence, potential and diversity; no pay range and no interview steps.
• 10Inter IKEA Groupwhat Inter IKEA does, the IKEA franchisor, and about 27,500 co-workers.
• 11IKEA, the IKEA franchise systemInter IKEA Systems B.V. as the worldwide franchisor and the 3% franchise fee.
• 12Glassdoor, Ingka Group interviewsreported: manager round, then a take-home, a technical round to explain the solution, and a round with the manager's manager (senior data role, June 2025); 91.7% positive, difficulty 3 out of 5. Read from the Google result snippet.
• 13Glassdoor, IKEA Software Engineer interviewsreported stages: phone interview 28%, one on one 24%, skills test 21%, plus personality tests. Read from the Google result snippet.
• 14Code Like A Girl, IKEA Senior Software Engineer Java Interview, Amsterdam (January 2026)reported: building a system from scratch covering the microservices and core Java, about 1.5 hours. Read from the Google result snippet because the page would not load for us.
• 15Levels.fyi, IKEA software engineer pay in Swedenreported: SEK 553K junior, SEK 639K software engineer, SEK 748K senior, median SEK 699K, read 5 October 2026.

Interview processes change. This reflects widely-reported and sourced conditions as of 2026 — confirm specifics with your recruiter, and treat it as a map rather than a guarantee.