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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.

20,120 data engineer interview questions shared by candidates

Python Questions: Avg length of words, some of the edge cases are having spaces in the beginning and end of the words, returning a float instead of int, returning None for blank input. Valid ip address, edge case to remember is if there are alphanumeric characters. SQL questions: One SQL question was tricky because you have to look at the data to come up with the question, the question is to find the percent of valid promotion, condition to find valid promotion is not specified in the question, so you have to figure it from looking at the data. Other SQL questions are based on a join, group by, top(3)
avatar

Data Engineer

Interviewed at Meta

3.6★
Feb 28, 2019

Python Questions: Avg length of words, some of the edge cases are having spaces in the beginning and end of the words, returning a float instead of int, returning None for blank input. Valid ip address, edge case to remember is if there are alphanumeric characters. SQL questions: One SQL question was tricky because you have to look at the data to come up with the question, the question is to find the percent of valid promotion, condition to find valid promotion is not specified in the question, so you have to figure it from looking at the data. Other SQL questions are based on a join, group by, top(3)

Onsite - 3 full stack interviews: given a KPI, choose the right metric, perform ETL (SQL/Code) . 1 lunch interview - casual discussion where you learn more about working in facebook and the interviewer tries to understand if you are a good fit.
avatar

Data Engineer

Interviewed at Meta

3.6★
Jun 13, 2017

Onsite - 3 full stack interviews: given a KPI, choose the right metric, perform ETL (SQL/Code) . 1 lunch interview - casual discussion where you learn more about working in facebook and the interviewer tries to understand if you are a good fit.

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Glassdoor has 20,120 interview questions and reports from Data engineer interviews. Prepare for your interview. Get hired. Love your job.