Data Engineering Interview Things

How many rounds are there in data engineer interview?

Amazon data engineer interviews are typically broken into three stages: An initial recruiter screen, a
technical screen, and an onsite round. In the technical and onsite rounds, candidates will be asked
questions focusing on core data engineering skills like SQL, data modeling, database design, and data
warehousing.

The on-site interview will have three to four rounds that include:

 A round based on Python, SQL, and big data frameworks.

 Two to three rounds on core data engineering concepts.

 A behavioral interview round.

What to expect in data engineer interview?

What can I expect from a data engineer interview? You can expect an HR phone screen, technical phone
screen, take-home exam, coding challenge, on-site interview,board database and system designs, SQL
interview, and finally, the “executive” interview to check cultural fit.

Preparing for data engineering interview

Data engineer interview questions are designed to test your knowledge of the relevant field and your
ability to analyze and interpret data. They evaluate your skills in accordance with the company’s tech
stack and technological objectives. It is crucial for a data engineer to rehearse for an interview, whether
they are just entering the job market or they are seasoned. With this guide, they can prepare for the
data engineer interview process and feel confident about acing it.

How to Prepare for a Data Engineer Interview

To start with, you should familiarize yourself with all the principles and jargon used in data engineering
before attending an interview. The following suggestions will also help you prepare for a technical data
engineer interview:

 Develop your SQL skills by creating, editing, and managing databases. You should also become
an expert in data analytics, modeling, and transformation

 Familiarize yourself with the application of Python, Scala, or C++ to resolve coding obstacles. The
majority of businesses use live coding challenges and take-home tests to evaluate programmers’
skills
  Create data, ETL, or delivery pipelines by designing an ETL pipeline. You must be aware of the
testing, validation, scaling, and upkeep of data pipelines

 Practice loading, converting, and data analytics using analytical engineering. Create a dashboard
for system performance and data quality

 Review sample practice questions to prepare you for the interview. Use Google to conduct a
quick search to gain access to hundreds of queries

 Learn about contemporary data engineering tools; even if you are unfamiliar with them, you
should be aware of how they operate and how they interact with other tools. Businesses are
constantly searching for new technologies that might boost productivity at a cheaper cost

 Learn about batch and streaming processing. For batch processing, use Apache Spark, and for
streaming data, use Apache Kafka. These tools are in high demand and can help you get hired by
the best firms

 The interviewer may occasionally inquire about Kubernetes, Terraform, scripting, and cloud
computing (GCP, AWS, Azure). These tools can be used to set up computer and storage
resources in the cloud or on-site. It’s a good idea to become familiar with these technologies
and use them in your portfolio work

The Ultimate Data Engineer Interview Guide

If you are a data engineer, you must be eager to learn how to prepare for data engineer interview
questions. Data engineering is an exponentially rising field, and top tech companies have abundant job
opportunities for professional data engineers globally. You should know that top companies' acceptance
rates can be as low as 0.2%, and it is better to be aware of the challenges ahead of you and prepare
yourself accordingly.

You must demonstrate your data engineering and soft skills while answering data engineer interview
questions to outperform the competition and create a lasting impact on the recruiting panel. The
following data engineer interview guide will help you ace your next technical interview

Here's what we'll cover in this article:

 Understanding the data engineer interview process

 How to prepare for a data engineer interview

 Technical skills required to crack data engineer interviews

 Top 5 tips to keep in mind on the day of the data engineer interview

 FAQs on data engineer interviews

Understanding the Data Engineer Interview Process

You should know the basic interview pattern to frame a strategic tech interview prep plan accordingly. A
typical data engineer interview at top technical companies includes:

 The initial HR screen round includes basic questions around your experience, interest in the
role, and the requirements of the role.

 The technical phone screen will include a couple of behavioral questions and coding questions.
The coding questions focus on data structures, mostly on arrays, trees, sorting, or linked lists.

 The on-site interview will have three to four rounds that include:
1. A round based on Python, SQL, and big data frameworks
2. Two to three rounds on core data engineering concepts
3. A behavioral interview round

How to Prepare for a Data Engineer Interview

Here is a step-by-step guide on how to prepare for a data engineer interview. You must follow the
below-mentioned guidelines to create a lasting impact on the recruiter.

1. Create a Stellar Data Engineer Resume

Your resume is your first impression before the recruiters and hiring managers. You should be specific
about the content of your resume and how you represent it. The following points are crucial for your
job-winning data engineer resume:

 You must only list the data engineering projects that you are ready to discuss in-depth with the
interviewers.

 The bullet points on your resume should demonstrate your skills, including technical
competency, problem-solving, teamwork, and collaboration. You should follow the STAR
(Situation Task Action Result) rule for bullet points in the work experience section. Most
importantly, you must quantify your result as numbers catch the recruiter's attention. They
showcase the scale and impact of your contribution to the project.

For example: "Developed a data pipeline using Airflow that led to process optimization and a revenue
increase of 22%."

 You must include date engineer resume keywords from the official job description for ATS
optimization.

2. Practice Coding

You must practice your coding skills on a whiteboard instead of only using paper or IDEs that provide
syntax support and familiar formatting. This way, you will get comfortable with the actual coding
interview rounds. You should be well-versed in basic and the most advanced problems. You can choose
a programming language, such as R or Python, and begin with the basics, such as working on the syntax
and commands for the particular language.
Once you are thorough with the basics, progressively advance to algorithm design and development.
You must practice some coding questions on programming websites like LeetCode or HackerRank to get
comfortable writing code on a CoderPad.

3. Brush Up on Data Engineering Fundamentals

While preparing for your data engineer interview, make sure you brush up on the fundamentals. You
should be well-acquainted with SQL, data structure, and algorithms.

SQL

It is a critical skill for data engineers, and most companies have an SQL interview in addition to a coding
interview. As a data engineer, you are responsible for building reliable and scalable data processing and
data modeling solutions. You should be adept at SQL and perform better than data analysts and
scientists.

You should know that SQL is a data processing pattern shared by many big data frameworks, such as
SparkSQL, pandas, KafkaSQL, in addition to being a query language. You should be proficient in
translating complicated business questions into SQL queries and data models with good performance.
You must understand how the query engine and optimizer work to efficiently write queries that process
data.

Data Structure and Algorithms

You should be prepared for the following essential data structures and algorithms topics that regularly
feature technical interviews at FAANG+ companies.

1. Sorting algorithms — quicksort, merge, heap sort.

2. Arrays, strings, and linked lists

3. Hash tables and queues

4. Recursion

5. Trees and graphs

6. Graph algorithms, including greedy algorithms

7. Dynamic programming

4. Familiarize Yourself With the Most-Anticipated Data Engineer Interview Questions

You must practice the commonly asked data engineer interview question on system design, data
modeling, and Python.

System Design

System design data engineer interview questions are often the most challenging part of technical
interviews. The interviewer can ask you to design a data solution from end to end, usually composed of
three parts: data storage, data processing, and data modeling.
For instance, for data engineer interview interviewer questions like design a data warehouse from end
to end, you must first ask follow-up questions to pin down the requirements. You have to choose the
best combination of data storage systems and data processing frameworks based on those
requirements.

Python

Python is an object-oriented programming language with the exception of control flow. Python is
important for data engineers because of its ease of use, strong typing, abundant third-party libraries,
and simple syntax. Here are a few Python interview questions for the data engineer Apple interview and
other Tier-1 tech companies.

For example, write a function to:

1. Find _bigrams and return a list of all bigrams from the given string.

2. Locate the left insertion point for a specified value in the sorted order.

3. Create a queue. Display all the members and the size of the queue.

4. Find its first recurring character in a given string using recurring_char. Return 'None' if there isn't
a recurring character.

5. Find all combinations that equal the value N in a given list of integers.

Some theoretical Python data engineer interview questions include:

1. Which Python libraries would you prefer for data processing?

2. How would you use data smoothing?

3. What are the benefits of using NumPy?

4. State the difference between *args and **kwargs.

5. How is "is" different from "=="?

6. How is memory managed in Python?

7. Do dictionaries offer faster lookups than lists in Python? If yes, explain why.

8. How would you remove duplicates from a list in Python?

5. Take Mock Interviews to Prepare for Behavioral Interview Rounds

You must practice answering the common data engineer interview questions for the behavioral
rounds but avoid providing generic or scripted answers. The STAR method is the best approach to
structure your answers to data engineer interview questions as this helps the hiring managers follow
your chain of thought.

You should practice via mock interviews for hypothetical situation-based questions that form an integral
part of the final rounds of the on-site interviews.

6. Learn About the Company and Interviewers

As you prepare for your data engineering interview, devote some time to learning about the company
and the interviewers. You must conduct proper research and learn about the company's principles,
projects, strategic decisions in the recent past, products, achievements, and current challenges. This
knowledge will convey your genuine interest in working with them.

Technical Skills Required to Crack Data Engineer Interviews

Here is a list of top technical skills that will help you crack data engineer interviews. You can include
these on your data engineer resume to show that you are a good fit for the potential job position:

 UNIX, Linux

 Knowledge of SQL, MySQL, NoSQL

 Proficiency in Postgres, relational databases

 ETL skills including SSIS, PowerCenter, SSRS, data stage

 Knowledge of ELK Stack, APIs, Oracle, Tableau, Git, Snowflake.

 Hands-on experience with big data technologies include Hadoop, Apache Kafka, Spark, Hive,
Cassandra

 Familiarity with Google Cloud, GCP

 AWS cloud services: Blueshift, RDS, S3, EC2

 Experience in stream processing systems such as Storm, MLib, Spark Streaming

 Data modeling for analytical systems

 Expertise in workflow management tools such as Luigi, Azkaban, Airflow

 Software engineering skills including Agile, Scrum

 Basic knowledge of Machine Learning, BI, Platform Engineering

 Strong coding skills in Java, Python, Ruby, Scala, C, C++, C#, .Net, Perl, Golang, SAS, MatLab, or R.

You will also require a set of soft skills for data engineering positions. The most sought-after soft skills
are as follows:

 You must possess strong analytical skills to handle unstructured data.

 Your expertise in project organization and management abilities can give you an upper hand
over other candidates.

 You should have experience in supporting and working across teams. Teamwork abilities are a
prerequisite for your job role because you will often work closely with data scientists and team
members.

Top 5 Tips to Keep in Mind on the Day of the Data Engineer Interview

The following tips will help you stand out in data engineer interviews.
 1. To succeed in the data engineering interview, you must exhibit a diverse skillset.

2. While answering each question, you must take your time to demonstrate analytical and
problem-solving skills effectively. Your answers should reflect your rational mindset and critical
thinking abilities.

3. You must ask a few questions as interviewers prefer hiring date engineers who are forthright in
learning more about the company and the role.

4. During the coding interview, you must think out loud to let the interviewer know about your
approach when solving a problem.

5. For the coding round, select a programming language that you are proficient in.

FAQs on Data Engineer Interview

1. How should I answer the situational data engineer interview questions?

You should be prepared for the most common situational data engineer interview questions.
These help the interviewer judge your character and test your problem-solving abilities under
pressure. Talk about your notable achievements under dire circumstances at your previous jobs.
You can precisely explain the problem, how you identified the cause, your course of action, and
how that helped your company generate increased output.

2. Are data engineer interview questions hard?

You should know that interviewees rate data engineer interview questions as medium-hard.
They can be challenging, and it is not always easy to tackle technical data engineer interview
questions. However, if you brush up on the basic concepts and practice the most crucial data
engineer interview questions well, you can nail the most demanding rounds.

3. Is coding important for data engineer interview questions?

Your coding knowledge enables you to easily manipulate and clean the data you work with
every day. For data engineer interview questions, you need to understand how to program in at
least one language, such as Python, JS, or C++. Top companies have at least one coding
interview round to check your ability.

4. What is the annual salary of a data engineer?

The average data engineer salary is $122,998 annually and $63.06 per hour in the United States

5. How should I research the data engineer position I am applying for?

Scan the job description carefully to understand everything the company seeks in the data
engineer position. Visit the company website, go through their “About Us” page, and learn
about their values, employee benefits, leadership, products, and more. Also, check out the
company's YouTube channel and research employees on LinkedIn.

How to Prepare for Your Data Engineering Interview

In an interview for any Engineering role, the interviewer wants to understand if you have good analytical
skills, problem-solving ability, communication, work culture and ability to build technical solutions.
Specific to Data Engineering, they also want to understand if you have the skills to handle large data and
build scalable and robust systems. In this article, we will cover how to best prepare and perform at each
type of Data Engineering interview, ranging from algorithms, system design, SQL questions, to the
essential behavioral component.

The typical Data Engineering interview process.

Phone Screens

There are two types of phone screens: HR, which is generally all behavioral questions, and technical
phone screens.

The HR phone screen is usually 15–30 minutes and conducted by non-technical staff at the company,
such as a recruiter. You’ll be asked soft questions such as Why do you want to be a Data Engineer?
Where do you see yourself in 5 years? Why do you want to work at our company? And
importantly, what salary are you expecting? These questions can seem boring or odd if you don’t know
the real reason for them behind the scenes: HR wants to find the right fit for their team. They want a
candidate who will be communicating well with their peers and managers and stay at the company for a
long time because hiring and onboarding are expensive!

Just as the HR phone screen is a filter for basic communication ability, the technical phone screen is a
filter for basic technical ability. On-site interviews are very costly in terms of time and team resources,
so companies don’t want to spend hours on a candidate who can’t code well. An assessment of basic
SWE knowledge and the ability to break down complicated ideas to smaller understandable pieces are
the most essential reasons for technical phone screens.

HR Phone Screen Summary

Phone Screens
There are two types of phone screens: HR, which is generally all behavioral questions, and technical
phone screens.

The HR phone screen is usually 15–30 minutes and conducted by non-technical staff at the company,
such as a recruiter. You’ll be asked soft questions such as Why do you want to be a Data Engineer?
Where do you see yourself in 5 years? Why do you want to work at our company? And
importantly, what salary are you expecting? These questions can seem boring or odd if you don’t know
the real reason for them behind the scenes: HR wants to find the right fit for their team. They want a
candidate who will be communicating well with their peers and managers and stay at the company for a
long time because hiring and onboarding are expensive!

Just as the HR phone screen is a filter for basic communication ability, the technical phone screen is a
filter for basic technical ability. On-site interviews are very costly in terms of time and team resources,
so companies don’t want to spend hours on a candidate who can’t code well. An assessment of basic
SWE knowledge and the ability to break down complicated ideas to smaller understandable pieces are
the most essential reasons for technical phone screens.

HR Phone Screen Summary

Expect a 15–30 minute teleconference call discussing your background, goals, and interest in their
company.

They are looking for clear communication, a pleasant person to work with, someone who is enthusiastic
about the company and has done their research, ideally translating into a loyal employee willing to stay
and be happy at their company.

Example questions include tell me about your background. Why do you want to be a Data Engineer at
[company]? What is your desired salary range?

To prepare:

1. Write and practice a script for your background.

2. Do a deep dive into company values and tweak your answer accordingly.
3. Practice with your peers over the phone (we know it can be awkward).
4. Settle in a quiet place with a good Internet connection at least 10 minutes before the interview.

Technical Phone Screen Summary

Expect a 30–60 minute teleconference call answering basic DE concepts or classic SWE questions,
usually from a member of the engineering team.

They are looking for people with basic knowledge in SWE and DE, problem-solving skills, and ability to
communicate technical information.

Example questions include what are linked lists? How would you code them in your language of choice?
Find all duplicates in a list. When would you use SQL vs. NoSQL databases?

To prepare:
1. Read Data Engineering Cookbook and answer at least 50 questions.
2. Practice random questions from the book with your peers.
3. Do 50 easy LeetCode problems.
4. Settle in a quiet place with good Internet connection at least 10 minutes before the interview.

Take-Home Exams

Your resume says you have many years of experience, leading multiple projects. How do companies
know if you’re really that good? In most cases, there is no access to your old company GitHub
repository, and it takes time to read and understand personal GitHub projects — not to mention they
won’t know for sure that you wrote the code. A take-home coding challenge is the easiest and fastest
way to assess how production-ready your code is, how you account for edge cases and exception
handling, and whether you can solve a given problem in an optimal way. There are two main types of
exams:

Timed Hackerrank

Expect 1.5–2 hours exam with 3–5 easy-medium HackerRank questions

including SQL, regular expressions, algorithms, and data structures

They are looking for engineers who know efficient algorithms and data structures for solving standard
computer science questions, take edge cases into account, and provide the solution quickly

To prepare:
1. Solve at least 100 LeetCode/HackerRank problems
2. Practice with Virtual Leetcode Contests — all free past contest that you can take any time, and try to
solve problems quickly and correctly on the first try
3. Block off a chunk of time where you’ll be in a comfortable environment where you usually do
technical work and make sure you won’t be interrupted and have plenty of water and snacks (if
needed).

Coding Challenge

Expect 1–7 days to write code to answer 1–10 questions on 1–3 datasets, push it to your GitHub
repository and submit the link.

They are looking for clean and modular code, good README with clear delivered ideas, unit tests, and
exception handling.

Example question Clean and analyze a dataset of employee salaries and locations. What is the
distribution of salaries at different locations? Write a SQL query to do the equivalent task.

To prepare
1. Read and internalize the Google style guide.
2. Practice using the unittest library in Python or equivalent.
3. Read GitHub best practices.

On-Site Interview

You should feel very accomplished if you get to the on-site interview, but the hardest part is yet to
come! On-sites can be grueling affairs of interviewing with 4–10 people in 3–6 hours, especially if you’re
not prepared. Knowing what to expect and doing realistic preparation beforehand go a long way toward
reducing fear and nervousness.

Whiteboard Algorithms and Data Structures

This is the most common type of interview, because of knowledge of algorithms and data structures is
crucial for cost- and time-efficient code. It’s usually done on the whiteboard to evaluate your coding
skills with no IDE/Stack Overflow and your technical communication skills.

Expect 30–45 minutes interview with 1–2 medium-hard questions to solve on the fly on a whiteboard,
constantly communicating requirements and solutions with the interviewer.

They are looking for your preparation before the interview, knowledge of basics and great
communication. Don’t work on the problem in silence — make it a conversation between you and the
interviewer.

To prepare
1. Solve 80–150 LeetCode problems on paper/whiteboard
2. Get at least 20 practice sessions as an interviewee with peers or professionals.
3. Practice writing clean, readable code on a whiteboard.

Whiteboard System Design

As a Data Engineer, on a day to day basis you are going to design entire systems from scratch or add
small features to existing pipelines. Even you mention these skills on your resume, it’s crucial for
companies to check your ability in a real-life.

Expect 30–45 minutes interview to design a data engineering system to spec.

Example questions: Design Twitter — what are the system blocks needed? What database and schema
would you use? What about caching and load balancing? What are the tradeoffs of a system?

They are looking for your ability to clearly communicate and scope down requirements, design a
concept-level pipeline, and knowledge of distributed systems basics.

To prepare
1. Read Data Engineering Cookbook, the Data Engineering Ecosystem and Grokking the System Design
Interview.
2. Practice at least 10 different questions on a whiteboard with peers or mentors.
3. Practice drawing clean, readable systems diagrams on the whiteboard.

SQL

Most companies are language agnostic. You can transition from Scala to Python to Java, but a deep
understanding of SQL is fundamental and irreplaceable to database work, even NoSQL databases. That’s
why more than 50% of companies have this type of interview as a part of the Data Engineering on-site.

Expect a 30–45 minutes interview with 1–3 hard HackerRank SQL questions + normalization, indexing,
ANALYZE-EXPLAIN for queries

Example questions include print the nth largest entry of a table column.
They are looking for your ability to write queries and optimize their existing RDBMS.

To prepare
1. Practice the 57 SQL questions book.
2. Google and learn about Query Optimization.

Cultural fit

It’s very important to be technically strong and knowledgeable, but it’s not enough! If you can’t deliver
your brilliant ideas, then no one else can understand and use them. Behavioral types of interviews, such
as cultural fit, are meant to show how you can tell your story and explain how you’ve handled tough
workplace situations.

They are looking for consistent and complete answers using the STAR (situation, task, action, result)
method.

Example questions include tell us about a time at work where you had a big deadline. Tell us about a
time when you had a conflict with another team member. How did you handle these situations?

The Data Engineering interview process:

This is the general process most companies follow :

1. Screening round: Online Test (1–2 coding problems : Leetcode Easy-Medium + 2–4 SQL
(Advanced)).

2. Round 2: Face2Face interview : DS Algo + SQL Advanced + Spark Basics.

3. Round 3: DS Algo + SQL Advanced + Distributed system design OR Spark + Project discussion.

4. Round 4 : Final round (Project Discussion / Design Patterns Knowledge + Spark + Scala/Python +
Hive questions).

5. Round 5: HR Discussion.

Data Engineer vs. Software Developer Interviews :

As a data engineer, you don’t have to focus on HARD Leetcode questions. Also, coding the problems
tends to be more like data engineering work than mainly algo questions.

Save yourself the effort and only prepare for LC easy and medium.

Comes in the dreaded Advanced SQL + Spark:

As a data engineer, writing complex SQL queries must be your strength. That means that not just
INSERT, DELETE, WHERE statements, you need to know things like:

1. Window functions

2. Subqueries
 3. Recursive Subqueries

4. CTEs (Common table expressions)

5. Using joins to answer questions.

Learn and practice advanced SQL from HackerRank (do all the problems), Leetcode (free ones are good
enough). I’ll be posting SQL + Interview experiences soon. Stay tuned for those or follow me on
Li/Medium.

Learn Spark and Hadoop Concepts:

Spark Coding Practice: The content on this is not very widely available. Only a few websites provide you
with Spark interview questions. I’ll compile some questions in the coming days. this

Data Engineer Coding Rounds look something like this :

1. DS & Algo question : LC Easy / medium : often involving reading out data and processing using
dictionaries.

2. SQL Problems : 2–3 : Definitely expect to be quizzed upon window functions and working
knowledge of advanced joins.

3. Spark coding : Convert the above SQL code to spark/ word count type of problems. MUST
KNOW : map, flatmap, reduce, reduceByKey, joining, collect_list/collect_set and wordcount type
problems.

4. Spark Concepts : Concepts related to general spark and optimization.

That’s all for now.

I’ll be adding more interview questions & experiences you can learn data engineering from, soon.

Please follow me here and on LinkedIn to not miss out on the content. I hope that would help you a lot.