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.

20,192 data engineer interview questions shared by candidates

Hacker Rank 3: Oh surprise, more regex. (I'm just joking, I can't remember the title but let's called file processing). Given a text file containing network connections information (space separated) like this: something - - "GET something something" [another thing with spaces in the middle] 4500 where: something = first column - = second column - = third column "Get something...." = forth column and so on. The last column, 4500 represents the number of bytes transmitted. You need to filter the records where a number of bytes are bigger than 5000 and the sum of bytes of those records.
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Data Engineer

Interviewed at Kueski

4
Sep 4, 2017

Hacker Rank 3: Oh surprise, more regex. (I'm just joking, I can't remember the title but let's called file processing). Given a text file containing network connections information (space separated) like this: something - - "GET something something" [another thing with spaces in the middle] 4500 where: something = first column - = second column - = third column "Get something...." = forth column and so on. The last column, 4500 represents the number of bytes transmitted. You need to filter the records where a number of bytes are bigger than 5000 and the sum of bytes of those records.

The minimum number of operations to reach a number using only incrementing and multiplying by 2 if you were to start from 0. Not so easy SQL question. Surprise regex and bash questions. The rest is easy multiple-choice questions based on data structures and OOP.
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Big Data Platform Engineer

Interviewed at PeakGames

3
Mar 24, 2022

The minimum number of operations to reach a number using only incrementing and multiplying by 2 if you were to start from 0. Not so easy SQL question. Surprise regex and bash questions. The rest is easy multiple-choice questions based on data structures and OOP.

Combination of filler fake HR generic questions, describe an ideal day, what do you think about working remotely, then lots of detailed questions to find out what you know about various technologies, processes and what you would recommend. This is the part you need to be careful. I'd recommend frankly not interviewing with this company and finding ways to test them to see if they are seriously hiring.
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Data Engineer

Interviewed at InVision

3.8
Nov 1, 2018

Combination of filler fake HR generic questions, describe an ideal day, what do you think about working remotely, then lots of detailed questions to find out what you know about various technologies, processes and what you would recommend. This is the part you need to be careful. I'd recommend frankly not interviewing with this company and finding ways to test them to see if they are seriously hiring.

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