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Data Engineer Interview Questions

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Data Engineer Interview Questions

Data engineers are IT professionals who are needed in almost every industry. Data engineers monitor data trends to determine best next steps for companies. A critical part of a data engineer job is to process raw data into usable data by creating data pipelines and building data systems.

Top Data Engineer Interview Questions & How To Answer

Question 1

Question #1: Can you describe in detail your level of expertise with programming languages?

How to answer
How to answer: Before the interview, review your resume and/or portfolio and make a list of the programs you are most proficient with. If you find that you are lacking the expertise in a program that the company predominately uses, describe yourself as a highly motivated self-starter who will work tirelessly to learn the program(s).
Question 2

Question #2: Explain data engineering in your own words.

How to answer
How to answer: Highlight your role in relation to the larger organization and other roles like data scientists to clearly define your contribution to the overall system of business. Clarify the difference between a database-centric engineer and a pipeline-centric engineer.
Question 3

Question #3: Can you describe your experience working with Apache Hadoop and cloud data management environments?

How to answer
How to answer: Research the company's software, data cloud products, and use of Apache Hadoop to be prepared for this inquiry. Data Engineers must be fluent in programming languages and data management systems used throughout the industry such as Apache Hadoop.

20,268 data engineer interview questions shared by candidates

Data Modelling: Given an input file for shoppers that should be loaded into row based DB, what is the optimized DB model (table / tables & columns) that will performs best for the following queries: 1) Get shoppers that are eligible for email & FB 2) Get shoppers that are eligible for email OR App 3) Get active shoppers (status = "A") that are NOT eligible for SMS Assumptions: there are 4 different delivery channels: e-mail, App, FB, SMS a shopper may have more than one delivery channels shopper has 2 status: A - Active or D - Disabled input data structure: +----------+-------+-------+--------+--------+--------+---------+ | id (key) | status| city | dc_1 | dc_2 | dc_3 | dc_4 | +----------+-------+--------+--------+--------+-------+---------+ |L1 | A | NY | e-mail | SMS | | | +----------+-------+--------+--------+--------+-------+---------+ |L2 | A | LA | e-mail | FB | App | | +----------+-------+--------+--------+--------+-------+---------+ |L3 | D | LA | SMS | FB | | | +----------+-------+--------+--------+--------+-------+---------+
avatar

Data Engineer

Interviewed at ciValue

4.2★
Mar 16, 2023

Data Modelling: Given an input file for shoppers that should be loaded into row based DB, what is the optimized DB model (table / tables & columns) that will performs best for the following queries: 1) Get shoppers that are eligible for email & FB 2) Get shoppers that are eligible for email OR App 3) Get active shoppers (status = "A") that are NOT eligible for SMS Assumptions: there are 4 different delivery channels: e-mail, App, FB, SMS a shopper may have more than one delivery channels shopper has 2 status: A - Active or D - Disabled input data structure: +----------+-------+-------+--------+--------+--------+---------+ | id (key) | status| city | dc_1 | dc_2 | dc_3 | dc_4 | +----------+-------+--------+--------+--------+-------+---------+ |L1 | A | NY | e-mail | SMS | | | +----------+-------+--------+--------+--------+-------+---------+ |L2 | A | LA | e-mail | FB | App | | +----------+-------+--------+--------+--------+-------+---------+ |L3 | D | LA | SMS | FB | | | +----------+-------+--------+--------+--------+-------+---------+

1. Walk through the your coding process? 2. What are the challenges faced by you and how you overcame them? 3. Interview stressed a little about the datastructures? 4. Knowledge about data pipeline is a plus.
avatar

Insight Data Engineer Fellow Ship

Interviewed at Insight Data Science

4★
Apr 28, 2016

1. Walk through the your coding process? 2. What are the challenges faced by you and how you overcame them? 3. Interview stressed a little about the datastructures? 4. Knowledge about data pipeline is a plus.

Given live minutely data for various tickers, how would you design a system that executes a DAG of computing thousands of signals, making everything available in a relational database? How would you publish the availability of this data (not the data itself, but metadata about it)? How would you publish and facilitate tracking if one or more signals could not be computed?

Lead Data Engineer

Interviewed at Rengen Labs

3.9★
Jun 15, 2022

Given live minutely data for various tickers, how would you design a system that executes a DAG of computing thousands of signals, making everything available in a relational database? How would you publish the availability of this data (not the data itself, but metadata about it)? How would you publish and facilitate tracking if one or more signals could not be computed?

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Glassdoor has 20,268 interview questions and reports from Data engineer interviews. Prepare for your interview. Get hired. Love your job.