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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.

20,118 data engineer interview questions shared by candidates

Data Modeling: Data Modeling Question for a hypothetical scenario where you have scope to work on your Data Warehousing knowledge. How will you design ETL pipelines for the model? SQL question to display data from your model. Python/SQL questions.
avatar

Data Engineer

Interviewed at Meta

3.6★
Dec 21, 2020

Data Modeling: Data Modeling Question for a hypothetical scenario where you have scope to work on your Data Warehousing knowledge. How will you design ETL pipelines for the model? SQL question to display data from your model. Python/SQL questions.

Q: how do you query tune? if a query is taking more time then it initially did, what may be the checkpoints and order of things to check to look at the cause Q: [python] find non duplicate numbers in first list and preserve the order of list [1,1,3,2,5,6,5] --> [1,3,2,5,6] Q: [python]flatten a nested list Q: [sql] Rank, row_number, dense rank questions
avatar

Data Engineer

Interviewed at Amazon

3.5★
May 25, 2021

Q: how do you query tune? if a query is taking more time then it initially did, what may be the checkpoints and order of things to check to look at the cause Q: [python] find non duplicate numbers in first list and preserve the order of list [1,1,3,2,5,6,5] --> [1,3,2,5,6] Q: [python]flatten a nested list Q: [sql] Rank, row_number, dense rank questions

1. Given the sample: id, status 1, active 2, active 3, active 4, pending 5, expired 6, expired 7, expired 8, pending Pull the unique statuses that show up consecutively 3 times, e.g. from the sample, the output would be 'active', 'expired'. 2. Given the sample: employee, in_out, time A, IN, 6:00 B, IN, 7:00 A, OUT, 8:00 C, IN, 9:30 A, IN, 9:00 A, OUT, 10:00 B, OUT, 11:00 C, OUT, 10:00 Determine which employees are in the building at 10:30.
avatar

Senior Data Engineer

Interviewed at Amazon

3.5★
Jan 7, 2022

1. Given the sample: id, status 1, active 2, active 3, active 4, pending 5, expired 6, expired 7, expired 8, pending Pull the unique statuses that show up consecutively 3 times, e.g. from the sample, the output would be 'active', 'expired'. 2. Given the sample: employee, in_out, time A, IN, 6:00 B, IN, 7:00 A, OUT, 8:00 C, IN, 9:30 A, IN, 9:00 A, OUT, 10:00 B, OUT, 11:00 C, OUT, 10:00 Determine which employees are in the building at 10:30.

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