Data Engineering

Interview preparation
Questions

Let’s go
1. What is a data engineer’s role within a team or company?
What they’re really asking: What is a data engineer responsible for?

For this question, recruiters want to know that you’re aware of the duties of a data
engineer. What do they do? What role do they play within a team? You should be able
to describe the typical responsibilities, as well as who a data engineer works with on a
team. If you have experience as a data scientist or analyst, you may want to describe

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how you’ve worked with data engineers in the past.

The interviewer might also ask:

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What do data engineers do?

How do data engineers work within a team?

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What impact does a data engineer have?

2. When did you face a challenge in dealing with unstructured data, and how did you
solve it?
What they’re really asking: How do you deal with problems? What are your strengths
and weaknesses?
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Essentially, a data engineer’s main responsibility is to build systems that collect,
manage, and convert raw data into usable information for data scientists and
business analysts to interpret. This question aims to ask about any obstacles you may
have faced when dealing with a problem, and how you solved it.
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This is your time to shine, where you can describe how you make data more
accessible through coding and algorithms. Rather than explaining the technicalities at
this point, remember the specific responsibilities listed in the job description and see if
you can incorporate them into your answer.
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The interviewer might also ask:

How do you solve a business problem?

What is your process for dealing with and solving problems during a project?

Can you describe a time when you encountered a problem and solved it in an
innovative manner?

Hear a data professional at Google, Hallie, describe her career and its impact in this
lecture from Google's Prepare Data for Exploration course:
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Data engineer process questions
Most often, data engineer job candidates will be asked about their projects. If you’ve
never been a data engineer previously, you can describe projects that you either
worked on for a class or posted on GitHub, a code hosting platform that promotes
collaboration among developers.

3. Walk me through a project you worked on from start to finish.

What they’re really asking: How do you think through the process of acquiring,

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cleaning, and presenting data?

You’ll definitely be asked a question about your thought process and methodology for

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completing a project. Hiring managers want to know how you transformed the
unstructured data into a complete product. You’ll want to practice explaining your
logic for choosing certain algorithms in an easy-to-understand manner, to
demonstrate you really know what you’re talking about. Afterward, you’ll be asked
follow-up questions based on this project.

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The interviewer might also ask:

What was the most challenging project you’ve worked on, and how did you complete
it?
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What is your process when you start a new project?

4. What algorithm(s) did you use on the project?

What they’re really asking: Why did you choose this algorithm, and can you
compare it with other similar algorithms?
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They want to know what you think about choosing one algorithm over another. It
might be easiest to focus on a project that you worked on and link any follow-up
questions to that project. If you have an example of a project and algorithm that
relates to the company’s work, then choose that one to impress the interviewer. List
the models you worked with, and then explain the analysis, results, and impact.
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The interviewer might also ask:

What is the scalability of this algorithm?

What would you do differently if you were to do the project again?

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5. What tools did you use on the project?
What they’re really asking: How did you arrive at your decision to use
certain tools?

Data engineers must manage huge swaths of data, so they need to

use the right tools and technologies to gather and prepare it all. If you
have experience using different tools such as Hadoop, MongoDB, and

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Kafka, you’ll want to explain which one you used for that particular
project.

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You can go into detail about the ETL (extract, transform, and load)
systems you used to move data from databases into a data
warehouse, such as Stitch, Alooma, Xplenty, and Talend. Some tools
work better for the back-end, so if you can communicate strong

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decision-making abilities, then you’ll shine as a candidate who’s
confident in their skills.

The interviewer might also ask:

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What are your favorite tools to use, and why?

Compare and contrast two or three tools that you used on a recent
project.
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Data engineer technical questions

Some interviewers might follow up with more technical questions, for
which you may want to refresh your memory prior to the interview.
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Familiarize yourself with the concepts listed in the job description and
practice talking through them.

6. What is data modeling?

Data modeling is the initial step toward designing the database and
analyzing data. You’ll want to explain that you’re capable of showing
the relationship between structures, first with the conceptual model,
then the logical model, and followed by the physical model.

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7. Explain the difference between structured data and unstructured
data.
Data engineers must turn unstructured data into structured data for
data analysis using different methods for transformation. First, you
can explain the difference between the two.

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Structured data is made up of well-defined data types with patterns
(using algorithms and coding) that make them easily searchable,

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whereas unstructured data is a bundle of files in various formats,
such as videos, photos, texts, audio, and more.

Unstructured data exists in unmanaged file structures, so engineers

collect, manage, and store it in database management systems
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(DBMS), turning it into structured data that is searchable.
Unstructured data might be inputted through manual entry or batch
processing with coding, so ELT is the tool used to transform and
integrate data into a cloud-based data warehouse.
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Second, you can share a situation in which you transformed data
into a structured format, drawing from learning projects if you lack
professional experience.
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8. What are the design schemas of data modeling?

Design schemas are fundamental to data engineering, so try to be
accurate while explaining the concepts in everyday language. There
are two schemas: star schema and snowflake schema.
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Star schema has a fact table that has several associated dimension
tables, so it looks like a star and is the simplest type of data
warehouse schema. Snowflake schema is an extension of a star
schema and adds additional dimension tables that split the data up,
flowing out like a snowflake’s spokes.

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9. What are big data’s four Vs?
The four Vs are volume, velocity, variety, and veracity. Chances are,
the interviewer will ask you not just what they are, but why they
matter. You might explain that big data is about compiling, storing,
and exploiting huge amounts of data to be useful for businesses. The
four Vs must create a fifth V, which is value.

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Volume: Refers to the size of the data sets (terabytes or petabytes)

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that need to be processed—for example, all of the credit card
transactions that occur in a day in Latin America.

Velocity: Refers to the speed at which the data is generated.

Instagram posts have high velocity.

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Variety: Refers to the many sources and file types of structured and
unstructured data.

Veracity: Refers to the quality of the data being analyzed. Data

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engineers need to understand different tools, algorithms, and
analytics in order to cultivate meaningful information.

10. Tell me some of the important features of Hadoop.

Hadoop is an open-source software framework for storing data and
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running applications that provides mass amounts of storage and

processing power. Your interviewer is testing whether you understand
its significance in data engineering, so you’ll want to explain that it is
compatible with multiple types of hardware that make it easy to
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access.

Hadoop supports rapid processing of data, storing it in the cluster

which is independent of the rest of its operations. It allows you to
create three replicas for each block with different nodes (collections
of computers networked together to compute multiple data sets at
the same time).

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11. Which ETL tools have you worked with? What is your favorite,
and why?
The interviewer is assessing your understanding of and

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experience with ETL tools. You’ll want to list the tools that you’ve
mastered, explain your process for choosing certain tools for a

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particular project, and choose one. Explain the properties that you
like about the tool to validate your decision.

12. What is the difference between a data warehouse and an

operational database?
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You can answer this question by explaining that databases using
Delete SQL statements, Insert, and Update focus on speed and
efficiency, so analyzing data can be more challenging. With data
warehouses, the primary focus is on calculations, aggregations,
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and select statements that make it ideal for data analysis.
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