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Data Scientist Interviews

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Data Scientist Interview Questions

In a data scientist interview, expect employers to ask questions that assess your data modeling, problem-solving, and programming skills. Be prepared to answer general questions that test your knowledge of statistics and data science. You should also be ready to answer open-ended questions that test your creativity, communication skills, and formal education in data modeling and programming.

Top Data Scientist Interview Questions & How to Answer

Question 1

Question #1: Which data modeling techniques do you prefer and why?

How to answer
How to answer: Turning data into understandable and actionable information is a critical part of the data scientist's job. This question allows employers to understand your data modeling skills and background. List and discuss your preferred data modeling techniques, including benefits such as ease of use, flexibility, etc.
Question 2

Question #2: How would you detect bogus Instagram accounts used for scamming consumers?

How to answer
How to answer: Questions like this one allow an employer to test your problem-solving skills. When answering open-ended questions such as these, feel free to ask clarifying questions and use whiteboards to demonstrate your coding and diagramming skills. Share your thought process as you work through the problem.
Question 3

Question #3: Describe circumstances that require a list, tuple, or set in Python.

How to answer
How to answer: Interviewers will use questions such as this one to test your Python programming skills. Review Python basics such as lists, tuples, and sets before your interview. You should be able to explain when and how each tool is used by data scientists.

54,376 data scientist interview questions shared by candidates

All interviewers asked about my projects. So i had to tell the exact same thing 5 times . It is such a waste of time. I am not sure what are they trying to assess . It seems like the hiring process is like a random coin toss. They didn't ask even a single question apart from my project. Also, to me it appears Microsoft has so many people who have been with the company for 15+years. May be there are really smart but they didn't appear to be energetic. My only advice would be not all teams are good at microsoft. Few teams i interiviewed in past had really smart and energetic people.
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Data Scientist

Interviewed at Microsoft

4★
Oct 15, 2016

All interviewers asked about my projects. So i had to tell the exact same thing 5 times . It is such a waste of time. I am not sure what are they trying to assess . It seems like the hiring process is like a random coin toss. They didn't ask even a single question apart from my project. Also, to me it appears Microsoft has so many people who have been with the company for 15+years. May be there are really smart but they didn't appear to be energetic. My only advice would be not all teams are good at microsoft. Few teams i interiviewed in past had really smart and energetic people.

What related experience and knowledge do you possess that demonstrates you were able to provide a material solution that resulted in a successfully designed and manufactured product that met the customers operational requirement(s).
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Materials Scientist

Interviewed at Rolls-Royce

4.1★
Apr 9, 2017

What related experience and knowledge do you possess that demonstrates you were able to provide a material solution that resulted in a successfully designed and manufactured product that met the customers operational requirement(s).

SoftDev : Python (I chose), you have an array of string sorted but with empty strings (e.g. ["abc","","","","cef","","","dej,""] and you want to know if an other string is in this array. How to do it with a complexity of O(log n) in general case ? Then how to find how many times it appears in this array ?
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Data Scientist Intern

Interviewed at Microsoft

4★
May 9, 2017

SoftDev : Python (I chose), you have an array of string sorted but with empty strings (e.g. ["abc","","","","cef","","","dej,""] and you want to know if an other string is in this array. How to do it with a complexity of O(log n) in general case ? Then how to find how many times it appears in this array ?

Me mostraron varios gráficos y dashboards con datos de negocio y me pidieron interpretar tendencias, detectar anomalías y explicar qué conclusiones tomaría a partir de los datos. También preguntaron cómo comunicaría esos resultados a clientes no técnicos.
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Data Scientist

Interviewed at Deloitte

3.8★
May 27, 2026

Me mostraron varios gráficos y dashboards con datos de negocio y me pidieron interpretar tendencias, detectar anomalías y explicar qué conclusiones tomaría a partir de los datos. También preguntaron cómo comunicaría esos resultados a clientes no técnicos.

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