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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.

20,234 data engineer interview questions shared by candidates

1) Data warehousing basics 2) Python coding - intermediate level 3) 2 SQL questions - group by, RANK() types 4) Resume drill down 5) Tell me about a time you helped a teammate? 6) Hardest data pipeline you have worked on? 7) Difference between STAR, SNOWFLAKE and GALAXY schema 8) SCD and types 9) A recent ETL process you have worked on and challenges you faced in it
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Data Engineer Intern

Interviewed at Amazon

3.5★
May 5, 2022

1) Data warehousing basics 2) Python coding - intermediate level 3) 2 SQL questions - group by, RANK() types 4) Resume drill down 5) Tell me about a time you helped a teammate? 6) Hardest data pipeline you have worked on? 7) Difference between STAR, SNOWFLAKE and GALAXY schema 8) SCD and types 9) A recent ETL process you have worked on and challenges you faced in it

Problem: o A traveler flies to many cities (airports) in an unbroken chain of flights with no loops i.e never revisiting an airport. o For every flight, she has a boarding pass with only a From (City) and To (City) printed on it but no date/time. o At the end of her journey, she hands you all her boarding passes but they’re shuffled, so you don’t know the starting or the ending city. Can you: o Write logic or pseudocode to print her whole journey in sequence. It should print e.g. (Starting) City1 -> City2 ->….-> (Ending) CityX o State the time complexity of your solution. o you’re given a Set of BoardingPass objects as input. o there could be as many as hundreds of thousands of unique cities/airports. o memory is no concern (i.e. you have infinite memory!). Optimize for execution time (time complexity).
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Senior Software Engineer - Data Persistence & Messaging

Interviewed at Workday

3.5★
May 19, 2016

Problem: o A traveler flies to many cities (airports) in an unbroken chain of flights with no loops i.e never revisiting an airport. o For every flight, she has a boarding pass with only a From (City) and To (City) printed on it but no date/time. o At the end of her journey, she hands you all her boarding passes but they’re shuffled, so you don’t know the starting or the ending city. Can you: o Write logic or pseudocode to print her whole journey in sequence. It should print e.g. (Starting) City1 -> City2 ->….-> (Ending) CityX o State the time complexity of your solution. o you’re given a Set of BoardingPass objects as input. o there could be as many as hundreds of thousands of unique cities/airports. o memory is no concern (i.e. you have infinite memory!). Optimize for execution time (time complexity).

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