The hiring process at Deel takes an average of 5 days when considering 2 user submitted interviews across all job titles. Candidates applying for Backend Engineer had the quickest hiring process (on average 5 days), whereas Backend Engineer roles had the slowest hiring process (on average 5 days).
I applied online. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Deel in May 2025
Interview
I want to share my experience interviewing for the Payroll Compliance Analyst (Canada) position. I completed several rounds, including a second interview in late May. Afterward, I was informed that my application was still under review and that internal roadmap assessments were causing delays in making a final decision.
I followed up respectfully and continued to express interest. Nearly a month later, I received a rejection citing global circumstances and shifting priorities. But just a few hours afterward, the same role was reposted, along with another job that also aligned with my profile.
That felt frustrating and disingenuous. If I wasn’t the right fit, I would’ve appreciated clear and honest feedback instead of being strung along with vague excuses. Transparency matters, especially when a company asks for your time and preparation across multiple interviews.
I understand business needs change, but there are better ways to handle candidates, especially those who show genuine interest and invest in the process. I hope the recruitment experience here improves, because the way this was handled didn’t reflect the values the company claims to promote.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Can you walk me through how you handle year-end payroll tasks like RL-1 and T4 reporting, especially when using different systems?
I applied through an employee referral. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Deel in May 2024
Interview
Smooth and professional
Issues with the offer as when i started the negotiation process they lowered my offer by 2k annually because initial offer was too high after i started negotiating
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Explain a difficult project at work that ended up being good
I interviewed with Vika.
She asks if Im willing to work more than 8 hours a day and be on duty during weekends with no extra pay. Im pretty sure thats illegal in Spain. But whatever I tell her Im willing to do so.
She proceeds to send me the take-home challenge which consists of a "5 hour" node.js project that implements an API to deposit user balances, among other things. In reality you will spend 8+ hours in this challenge.
I made sure to read other reviews on here and made sure I focused on concurrencies and transactions. Plus went the "extra mile" and added some unit tests.
After a few days my application got rejected with the following pros and cons from the exercise. It seems as they did not even check the code as they lied about the cons of my implementation.
They said:
PROS: Prevents pay job twice, Transaction for pay job, Safe concurrent update of job and balances, Uses a sql aggregation for calculating the sum of unpaid jobs, Prevents negative/invalid deposit, Transaction for deposit, Admin aggregations in sequelize, No excessive use of transactions, At least 1 test.
CONS: Prevents deposits to another user's account, Prevents sql injection, Project structure by domain (or similar), No queries in routes/controllers
These cons were not even true to the exercise implementation. To which I replied:
- You cannot effectively deposit into another users account. The balancesRouter.js implements the logic to prevent doing so.
- You do not mention input sanitation in the instructions. Sequelize already prevents SQL injection by default when using parameter methods.
- There are no queries in the routers. They call services and repositories.
- You do not specify any requirement on the project structure. It uses a classic layered structure with service-repository separation.
They then replied doubling down on input sanitation and project structure.
Their engineering team discards candidates "at will" even when following all the exercise instructions. They really think "input sanitation" is a reason to discard this exercise with all the pros I highlighted.
Yes bro I can implement proper concurrency and db transactions but input sanitation is out of my skill level. Ok bro. What a joke.
Do not waste your time with this company.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Are you willing to be work on weekends in case of an incident with no extra pay? (Illegal practice)
Are you willing to work more than your 8 hours per day on some days?