Data Manipulation (SQL/Python) Interview Questions
Practice 653 real Data Manipulation (SQL/Python) interview questions for 2026. Covers companies like Meta, Amazon, TikTok, DoorDash, and Capital One. Real questions from actual interviews with detailed solutions — designed for focused interview preparation for data analysts, data scientists, and data engineers who must move fluidly between SQL and Python during live screens and take-home tasks. These questions emphasize practical skills: writing correct, efficient SQL (joins, GROUP BY, window functions, CTEs, NULL handling, and performance-aware predicates) and idiomatic Python/Pandas solutions (vectorized transforms, merges, reshaping, datetime handling, and robust data-cleaning). Interviewers evaluate correctness, edge-case reasoning, runtime and memory tradeoffs, reproducibility, and clear communication of assumptions. Expect timed whiteboard-style queries, pair-programming in a shared editor, and take-home notebooks. To prepare, practice translating SQL ↔ Pandas, explain results aloud, time-box exercises, test edge cases, and review common pitfalls such as NULL semantics, grouping logic, off-by-one errors, and inefficient joins.

"I got asked a hardcore MCM DP question and I saw it on PracHub as well. Solved that question in 5 minutes. Without PracHub I doubt I could solve it in 5 hours. Though somehow didn't get hired, perhaps I guess I solved it too fast? /s"

"Believe me i'm a student here jn US. Recently interviewed for MSFT. They asked me exact question from PracHub. I saw it the night before and ignored it cause why waste time on random sites. I legit wanna go back and redo this whole thing if I had chance. Not saying will work for everyone but there is certainly some merit to that website. And i'm gonna use it in future prep from now on like lc tagged"

"10 years of experience but never worked at a top company. PracHub's senior-level questions helped me break into FAANG at 35. Age is just a number."

"I was skeptical about the 'real questions' claim, so I put it to the test. I searched for the exact question I got grilled on at my last Meta onsite... and it was right there. Word for word."

"Got a Google recruiter call on Monday, interview on Friday. Crammed PracHub for 4 days. Passed every round. This platform is a miracle worker."

"I've used LC, Glassdoor, and random Discords. Nothing comes close to the accuracy here. The questions are actually current — that's what got me. Felt like I had a cheat sheet during the interview."

"The solution quality is insane. It covers approach, edge cases, time complexity, follow-ups. Nothing else comes close."

"Legit the only resource you need. TC went from 180k -> 350k. Just memorize the top 50 for your target company and you're golden."

"PracHub Premium for one month cost me the price of two coffees a week. It landed me a $280K+ starting offer."

"Literally just signed a $600k offer. I only had 2 weeks to prep, so I focused entirely on the company-tagged lists here. If you're targeting L5+, don't overthink it."

"Coaches and bootcamp prep courses cost around $200-300 but PracHub Premium is actually less than a Netflix subscription. And it landed me a $178K offer."

"I honestly don't know how you guys gather so many real interview questions. It's almost scary. I walked into my Amazon loop and recognized 3 out of 4 problems from your database."

"Discovered PracHub 10 days before my interview. By day 5, I stopped being nervous. By interview day, I was actually excited to show what I knew."

"I recently cleared Uber interviews (strong hire in the design round) and all the questions were present in prachub."
"The search is what sold me. I typed in a really niche DP problem I got asked last year and it actually came up, full breakdown and everything. These guys are clearly updating it constantly."
Write Postgres string parsing and aggregation query
You are given a PostgreSQL table events(user_id TEXT, raw TEXT) where raw stores pipe-delimited key=value pairs, for example 'user=U1|country=US|ts=20...
Implement scalable word count locally
Write a function that reads a very large text file and outputs the frequency of each word. Define your tokenization and normalization rules (case fold...
Write PostgreSQL string-manipulation query
You are given a PostgreSQL table clickstream(session_id TEXT, page TEXT, query TEXT, ts TIMESTAMP). The page column contains full URLs like 'https://s...
Evaluate SQL expressions for zero
Which of the following SQL expressions evaluate to 0? Evaluate each independently, justify the result, and note any dialect-specific behavior (e.g., M...
Optimize SQL to minimize scans
Given a large analytics query, refactor it to minimize table scans. 1) Replace unnecessary CTEs that cause multiple scans with inline aggregations or ...
Debug a Hive Query for DAU
You are given two Hive tables: users(user_id BIGINT, created_at TIMESTAMP) and events(user_id BIGINT, event_time TIMESTAMP, event_name STRING) PARTITI...
Compute SHOP spend share and model performance
You work on ads measurement. Advertisers can drive users to either Facebook Shop ('SHOP') or their own website ('WEBSITE'). After an ad is shown, you ...
Solve three SQL problems (easy/medium/hard)
Answer the following SQL tasks of increasing difficulty: 1) Aggregation: Given Orders(order_id, customer_id, amount, order_date), return each customer...
Count sports by calendar quarter in SQL
You are given a table games(date DATE, team_name TEXT, sport_name TEXT). Write a SQL query that returns, for each year and calendar quarter (Q1–Q 4), ...
Compute nearest index within threshold after walking distances
You are given: ( 1) points: a list of N 2D coordinates in miles, points[i] = [x_i, y_i], ordered; ( 2) distances: a list of M nonnegative floats (mile...
Fetch and aggregate paginated team data via API
Implement a function getTopTeams(baseUrl, n) that calls a paginated HTTP API returning a JSON array of team objects on each page: [{"name": string, "w...
Write conditional aggregation SQL queries
Question Write an SQL query to compute the total amount for rows satisfying a condition, comparing approaches that use SUM(CASE WHEN … THEN … END) ver...
Query carpool ride metrics
Question For a ride-sharing product with carpool capability, answer a series of SQL questions (e.g., daily completed pooled rides, average seats utili...
Count active follow connections
Question Write SQL to return the current number of active follow connections. Events table columns: user_id, target_id, event_type ('request_follow', ...
Compute and Rank Store Revenue by Region Using Pandas
Sales +------------+---------+------------+--------+---------+ | date | store_id| product_id | units | revenue | +------------+---------+------...
Analyze Ad CTR and Convert Transactions to USD
AdsImpressions +-----------+---------+------------+--------+-----------+ | user_id | ad_id | impressions| clicks | event_dt | +-----------+------...
Improve YoY Revenue Analysis with Complementary Metrics
ads_revenue +------------+-----------+ | date | revenue | +------------+-----------+ | 2023-01-01 | 120000 | | 2023-02-01 | 125500 | | 2...
Identify Top Three Active Users by Event Date
event_log +------------+---------+-----------+---------------------+ | event_date | user_id | event_type| event_timestamp | +------------+--------...
Analyze Order Spending Patterns Across Cities Using SQL
Orders order_id | user_id | order_date | city | order_value 1 | 101 | 2023-01-03 | LA | 23.50 2 | 102 | 2023-01-04 | NY | 45.00 3 | 101 | 2023-01-10 |...
Determine Tutorial Completion Rate by Variant in 7 Days
users | user_id | sign_up_at | tutorial_variant | | 101 | 2023-08-01 | original | | 102 | 2023-08-02 | variant | | 103 | 2023-08-02 | original | | 104...