Skip to contentSkip to footer

Data Engineer Interview Questions

Salaries
Interviews

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.

20,235 data engineer interview questions shared by candidates

Despite my mentioning that I had only heard about map-reduce at talks, and not really used it, he decided to ask me a question on the same subject. How would you solve this ML problem using map-reduce? Another question was, what type of problems would you be interested in solving given a large amount twitter data. These were essentially the two "substantive" questions that he asked me, which I presume he'd be using to judge my candidacy!
avatar

Data Scientist/Software Engineer

Interviewed at X

3★
May 1, 2013

Despite my mentioning that I had only heard about map-reduce at talks, and not really used it, he decided to ask me a question on the same subject. How would you solve this ML problem using map-reduce? Another question was, what type of problems would you be interested in solving given a large amount twitter data. These were essentially the two "substantive" questions that he asked me, which I presume he'd be using to judge my candidacy!

Write SQL code for any one business case scenario related to their e-commerce dataset and make a small presentation explaining first the problem statement scenarios, how you can add value and solve the problem and identify a solution.
avatar

Data Engineer

Interviewed at MYTOYS GROUP

3.7★
Sep 28, 2022

Write SQL code for any one business case scenario related to their e-commerce dataset and make a small presentation explaining first the problem statement scenarios, how you can add value and solve the problem and identify a solution.

Viewing 1821 - 1830 interview questions

Glassdoor has 20,235 interview questions and reports from Data engineer interviews. Prepare for your interview. Get hired. Love your job.