31 Common Data Engineering Interview Questions

Here are some of the most common data engineering interview questions:

1. What are your current projects?
2. What are your goals as a data engineer?
3. What's the most important skill you need to do your job well?
4. What tools and languages are most used in your current data engineering position?
5. What are your preferred tools for data engineering?
6. What is Big Data?
7. How do you scale a database?
8. What is ETL?
9. How would you define the difference between relational and non-relational databases?
10. What are some of the most common database design patterns?
11. How would you go about extracting data from a large, unstructured dataset?
12. What is your experience with Apache Spark and how would you use it at [company name]?
13. 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?
14. How do you know if your code is well-written or efficient?
15. What metrics do you use to measure the performance of your code?
16. How do you make sure it works in production?
17. Why is it important that the data engineer has a strong background in math and statistics?
18. How do you ensure that data quality is maintained throughout the data pipeline?
19. What kind of problems do you solve as a data engineer?
20. What do you like most and least about the role of a data engineer?
21. What would you like to improve in your current role as a data engineer?
22. How do you keep up with the latest trends in data engineering?
23. What are some of the biggest challenges you have faced as a data engineer?
24. What is the most important responsibility of Data Engineers?
25. What is your favorite thing about being a Data Engineer?
26. What is your greatest strength?
27. What is your greatest weakness?
28. What are some of the most important skills that you would want to improve upon in the next year?
29. How do you feel about working in a remote environment?
30. Tell me about a time when your work was criticized by a peer or supervisor, and what did you learn from it?
31. How would you handle a situation where you weren't able to complete all of your tasks within the allotted time frame?