Elder Research Data Scientist interview questions

Most of the people I talked to were intelligent, and genuinely interested in data science. They didn't seem caught up by the hype, which was a refreshing, given some of the other interviews I had been in. They seem to have some bright people over there. However, the last interviewer gave me a really bad vibe. He introduced himself as the 'elite data scientist' in the office, and proceeded to ask a super convoluted case question, which was obviously not well thought out. He kept shifting the perspective from which he was asking questions. 'No, now I'm the client, so explain it simply' to 'no, now I'm the elite data scientist, so tell me the details'... It was so awkward, that he turned to the other interviewer at one point and said 'Do you have anything to say? Come on! I'm doing all the talking!'.

First round was more behavioral in nature, really focusing in on what motivates me and the issues I care about and would be interested in working with. I got to know the people there in a way that seemed very genuine. Second round got a bit more technical, but still mostly conceptual. For example, I was asked how I would deal with very large feature spaces without adequate row count. I explained, verbally, some potential approaches (PCA, unsupervised feature reduction) and was pushed on detailed questions about how the processes work but was not required to provide mathematical proof or code. To me this was a perfect balance.