31 Common Data Engineering Interview Questions
Here are some of the most common data engineering interview questions:
- What are your current projects?
- What are your goals as a data engineer?
- What's the most important skill you need to do your job well?
- What tools and languages are most used in your current data engineering position?
- What are your preferred tools for data engineering?
- What is Big Data?
- How do you scale a database?
- What is ETL?
- How would you define the difference between relational and non-relational databases?
- What are some of the most common database design patterns?
- How would you go about extracting data from a large, unstructured dataset?
- What is your experience with Apache Spark and how would you use it at [company name]?
- Can you describe a time when you had to make a trade-off between performance and scalability? What did you do and why did you choose that approach?
- How do you know if your code is well-written or efficient?
- What metrics do you use to measure the performance of your code?
- How do you make sure it works in production?
- Why is it important that the data engineer has a strong background in math and statistics?
- How do you ensure that data quality is maintained throughout the data pipeline?
- What kind of problems do you solve as a data engineer?
- What do you like most and least about the role of a data engineer?
- What would you like to improve in your current role as a data engineer?
- How do you keep up with the latest trends in data engineering?
- What are some of the biggest challenges you have faced as a data engineer?
- What is the most important responsibility of Data Engineers?
- What is your favorite thing about being a Data Engineer?
- What is your greatest strength?
- What is your greatest weakness?
- What are some of the most important skills that you would want to improve upon in the next year?
- How do you feel about working in a remote environment?
- Tell me about a time when your work was criticized by a peer or supervisor, and what did you learn from it?
- How would you handle a situation where you weren't able to complete all of your tasks within the allotted time frame?