Databricks Software Engineer Interview Questions
Databricks Software Engineer interview questions focus on algorithmic coding and deeper systems problems that reflect real-world, data-intensive challenges. What’s distinctive about Databricks is the strong emphasis on distributed-systems thinking and performance: interviewers often probe Spark/Delta Lake concepts, cluster/resource tradeoffs, concurrency, and practical optimization rather than purely theoretical puzzles. Candidates are typically evaluated on problem-solving, code clarity and correctness, systems design for scale, debugging and performance reasoning, and communication skills that show how they collaborate across product and data teams. Effective interview preparation balances algorithm practice with hands-on distributed-systems experience. Expect a multi-stage process that usually begins with a recruiter screen and a timed coding assessment or technical phone screen, followed by deeper coding rounds, a system-design/architecture interview tailored to data platforms, and behavioral or hiring-manager conversations. Most interviews are virtual and use online IDEs. To prepare, do timed coding mocks, study distributed-systems fundamentals and Spark internals, build and optimize small ETL/Spark jobs, and craft concise STAR stories showing ownership and impact. During interviews, explain tradeoffs, write clear testable code, ask clarifying questions, and avoid undocumented assumptions.
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Design a single-node persistent in-memory cache
Scenario Design a single-machine cache used by a web service to handle read/write requests. The cache should: - Store key/value pairs in memory (fast ...
Find path in implicit Fibonacci tree
You are given a special family of binary trees called Fibonacci trees. The k‑th order Fibonacci tree T(k) is defined recursively: - T(1) is a single n...
Implement streaming RLE and bit-packed codec
You are implementing a simple compression scheme for sequences of 32‑bit signed integers. The codec should support two encoding strategies: 1. Run‑Len...
Find k customers with least revenue
Problem You are given a list of purchase events. Each event contains: - customer_id (string or int) - amount (integer, may be 0; assume non-negative u...
Design a KV store with QPS API
Design a key-value (KV) store that supports basic read/write operations and also exposes an API to report QPS (queries per second). Functional require...
Compute 5-minute rolling average load
You are building a monitoring component for a key–value (KV) store. Each request contributes 1 unit of load at its request time. Design a data structu...
Minimize run-length encoded length with deletions
Problem You are given a string s (uppercase English letters) and an integer k. You may delete at most k characters from s. After deletions, you compre...
Design KV store with sliding-window average QPS
Problem Design an in-memory key–value store that supports mutation operations and can report the average QPS (queries per second) over a recent time w...
Design a Visa-like payment processing system
System Design Prompt Design a card payment processing system similar to a Visa/Mastercard network. The system should support: - Card-present and card-...
Implement a rate-limited hit counter
You are designing a hit counter that records the number of hits received in the past 5 minutes. Implement a class HitCounter with the following method...
Evaluate ACL rules for IP and CIDR
Problem You are implementing an IPv4 access-control list (ACL). The ACL contains ordered rules; each rule has: - action: either ALLOW or DENY - cidr: ...
Design CRUD APIs with async jobs
Scenario Design a small backend service that manages a core entity with CRUD operations and also supports an asynchronous background job triggered by ...
Implement run-length encoding and decoding
You are given a string consisting of lowercase English letters. You need to implement run-length encoding (RLE) and its corresponding decoding. 1. Enc...
Find path between nodes in Fibonacci tree
You are given a recursively defined Fibonacci tree F(k): - F(0) is a single node. - F(1) is a single node. - For k >= 2, F(k) consists of: - a root ...
Optimize a SQL query plan tree
Problem You are given an in-memory representation of a SQL query plan as a tree of nodes (a relational algebra plan). Each node is one of: - Scan(tabl...
Design a digital game shop backend
Design the backend for a simple digital game shop where users can buy virtual items (e.g., games, in‑game currency, skins) using credits in their acco...
Check if CIDR is fully canceled by rules
You are given: - A target CIDR block T as a string, e.g. "10.0.0.0/16". - A list of rule CIDR blocks. Each rule has: - A type: either "allow" or "de...
Implement firewall matching with CIDR rules
Implement a simple IPv4 firewall rule matcher. Problem You are given an ordered list of firewall rules. Each rule has: - an action: ALLOW or DENY - a ...
Determine allow/deny for an IP via CIDR rules
Problem You are implementing a simple IPv4 firewall. You are given an ordered list of rules. Each rule has: - an action: either ALLOW or DENY - a CIDR...
Design a multithreaded event logger
Design a multithreaded in-memory event logger for a server application. Requirements: - Many worker threads running in the process need to log events ...