Data Engineer Interview Questions

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.

20,118 data engineer interview questions shared by candidates

SQL questions - A table schema with tables like employee, department, employee_to_projects, projects 1) Select employee from departments where max salary of the department is 40k 2) Select employee assigned to projects 3) Select employee which have the max salary in a given department 4) Select employee with second highest salary 5) Table has two data entries every day for # of apples and oranges sold. write a query to get the difference between the apples and oranges sold on a given day
avatar

Data Engineer

Interviewed at Meta

3.6
May 24, 2016

SQL questions - A table schema with tables like employee, department, employee_to_projects, projects 1) Select employee from departments where max salary of the department is 40k 2) Select employee assigned to projects 3) Select employee which have the max salary in a given department 4) Select employee with second highest salary 5) Table has two data entries every day for # of apples and oranges sold. write a query to get the difference between the apples and oranges sold on a given day

Given a dictionary, print the key for nth highest value present in the dict. If there are more than 1 record present for nth highest value then sort the key and print the first one (alphabetically). N can be higher than the number of elements in the dictionary.
avatar

Data Engineer

Interviewed at Meta

3.6
Aug 17, 2021

Given a dictionary, print the key for nth highest value present in the dict. If there are more than 1 record present for nth highest value then sort the key and print the first one (alphabetically). N can be higher than the number of elements in the dictionary.

Given a list of ints, balance the list so that each int appears equally in the list. Return a dictionary where the key is the int and the value is the count needed to balance the list. [1, 1, 2] => {2: 1} [1, 1, 1, 5, 3, 2, 2] => {5: 2, 3: 2, 2: 1}
avatar

Data Engineer

Interviewed at Meta

3.6
Aug 17, 2021

Given a list of ints, balance the list so that each int appears equally in the list. Return a dictionary where the key is the int and the value is the count needed to balance the list. [1, 1, 2] => {2: 1} [1, 1, 1, 5, 3, 2, 2] => {5: 2, 3: 2, 2: 1}

SQL questions on promotions, sales schema. what %age of products have both non fat and trans fat. find top 5 sales products having promotions what %age of sales happened on first and last day of the promotion Mysql was used and interviewer asked to if this can be done without subquery. Python:- [1,None,1,2,None} --> [1,1,1,2,2] Ensure you take care of case input[None] which means None object. find s in missisipi.
avatar

Data Engineer

Interviewed at Meta

3.6
Jun 29, 2020

SQL questions on promotions, sales schema. what %age of products have both non fat and trans fat. find top 5 sales products having promotions what %age of sales happened on first and last day of the promotion Mysql was used and interviewer asked to if this can be done without subquery. Python:- [1,None,1,2,None} --> [1,1,1,2,2] Ensure you take care of case input[None] which means None object. find s in missisipi.

products sales +------------------+---------+ +------------------+---------+ | product_id | int |------->| product_id | int | | product_class_id | int | +---->| store_id | int | | brand_name | varchar | | +->| customer_id | int | | product_name | varchar | | | | promotion_id | int | | price | int | | | | store_sales | decimal | +------------------+---------+ | | | store_cost | decimal | | | | units_sold | decimal | | | | transaction_date | date | | | +------------------+---------+ | | stores | | customers +-------------------+---------+ | | +---------------------+---------+ | store_id | int |-+ +--| customer_id | int | | type | varchar | | first_name | varchar | | name | varchar | | last_name | varchar | | state | varchar | | state | varchar | | first_opened_date | datetime| | birthdate | date | | last_remodel_date | datetime| | education | varchar | | area_sqft | int | | gender | varchar | +-------------------+---------+ | date_account_opened | date | +---------------------+---------+ Question 1: What brands have an average price above $3 and contain at least 2 different products? Question 2: To improve sales, the marketing department runs various types of promotions. The marketing manager would like to analyze the effectiveness of these promotion campaigns. In particular, what percent of our sales transactions had a valid promotion applied? Question 3: We want to run a new promotion for our most successful category of products (we call these categories “product classes”). Can you find out what are the top 3 selling product classes by total sales? Question 4: We are considering running a promo across brands. We want to target customers who have bought products from two specific brands. Can you find out which customers have bought products from both the “Fort West" and the "Golden" brands?
avatar

Data Engineer

Interviewed at Meta

3.6
May 22, 2020

products sales +------------------+---------+ +------------------+---------+ | product_id | int |------->| product_id | int | | product_class_id | int | +---->| store_id | int | | brand_name | varchar | | +->| customer_id | int | | product_name | varchar | | | | promotion_id | int | | price | int | | | | store_sales | decimal | +------------------+---------+ | | | store_cost | decimal | | | | units_sold | decimal | | | | transaction_date | date | | | +------------------+---------+ | | stores | | customers +-------------------+---------+ | | +---------------------+---------+ | store_id | int |-+ +--| customer_id | int | | type | varchar | | first_name | varchar | | name | varchar | | last_name | varchar | | state | varchar | | state | varchar | | first_opened_date | datetime| | birthdate | date | | last_remodel_date | datetime| | education | varchar | | area_sqft | int | | gender | varchar | +-------------------+---------+ | date_account_opened | date | +---------------------+---------+ Question 1: What brands have an average price above $3 and contain at least 2 different products? Question 2: To improve sales, the marketing department runs various types of promotions. The marketing manager would like to analyze the effectiveness of these promotion campaigns. In particular, what percent of our sales transactions had a valid promotion applied? Question 3: We want to run a new promotion for our most successful category of products (we call these categories “product classes”). Can you find out what are the top 3 selling product classes by total sales? Question 4: We are considering running a promo across brands. We want to target customers who have bought products from two specific brands. Can you find out which customers have bought products from both the “Fort West" and the "Golden" brands?

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