Upstart Interview Questions
Practice the exact questions companies are asking right now.
Estimate Family Proportions and Explain Regression Anomalies
On-site Statistics Round Task Overview You are given a population of families that have either 1, 2, or 3 children. You sample 100 children (i.e., the...
Explain Treatment Results and Recommend Launch Criteria for Experiments
A/B Test Interpretation, Launch Decision, Segmentation, and Multiple-Testing Control Context You ran an experiment with two treatments (t1, t2) agains...
Estimate and Derive Regression Coefficient for X on y
Statistics & Probability Onsite — Two-Part Question Context - You have a simple linear data-generating process: y = X + ε, where X and ε are independe...
Design a Regression Model for Robust Extrapolation Performance
Scenario Onsite machine-learning exercise: your task is to build a regression model using only numerical features that not only fits training data but...
How to Architect a Personalized Ads Serving System
Full-Funnel Ads Serving System Design Scenario You are asked to architect a full-funnel advertising platform that serves personalized ads to users on ...
Calculate Average Event Value by User ID
events +----+---------+------------+-------+---------------------+ | id | user_id | event_type | value | timestamp | +----+---------+-------...
Design Experiment to Measure Airport Surge-Pricing Impact
Experiment Design: Causal Impact of Airport Surge-Pricing Push Notifications on Driver Supply Context You operate a two-sided ride-hailing marketplace...
Design Push-Notification System for Airport Surge Pricing
Designing Airport Surge Push Notifications for Drivers Context You are building a real-time system for a ride-hailing platform. When an airport experi...
Calculate Expected Streaks in Coin Toss Sequence
Expected Number of Streaks in Coin Tosses Scenario You toss a coin repeatedly. A "streak" (a run) begins on the first toss and whenever the current to...
Address Missing Income Bracket in California Housing Data
ML Case: Missing Lowest-Income Bracket in California Housing Data Context You're building a supervised model (regression) to predict California housin...
Assess Probability of Heads in Coin Tosses
Probability with Coin Tosses and the Normal Distribution Context Onsite data scientist screening question assessing basic probability and distribution...
Navigate Conflicting Priorities in Cross-Functional Collaboration
Behavioral Interview: Cross-Functional Collaboration, Trade-offs, and Working Style Context You are interviewing for a Data Scientist role in a techni...
Design Algorithm for Longest Substring with K Distinct Characters
Scenario Tech interview round 2 – sliding-window algorithm Question Design an algorithm that finds the length of the longest substring containing at m...
Leverage Existing Model for Low Credit Score Applicants
Expanding a Credit-Risk Model to a New Score Band Scenario Your current probability-of-default (PD) lending model was trained only on applicants with ...
Ensure Fairness Beyond Gender Parity in Lending Practices
Fair Lending Behavioral Interview Prompt Scenario You are discussing fair lending practices during an on-site behavioral interview. Questions 1. The c...
Find Minimum Path Sum in Integer Triangle
Scenario Tech interview round 1 – dynamic programming challenge Question Given a triangle of integers, find the minimum path sum from top to bottom. A...
Explain L1 vs L2 and ridge vs lasso
Explain the differences between: 1. L1 vs L2 regularization (how they change the objective, geometry/intuitions, and typical effects on learned parame...
Compute decay, OLS, and classic probability results
You are asked several probability/statistics questions. 1) Radioactive decay (half-life) A radioactive atom has a half-life of 1 day. Assume each atom...
Implement factorial and count trailing zeros
Answer the following coding questions in Python. 1) Implement factorial Implement a function factorial(n) that returns \(n!\) for a non-negative integ...
Combine noisy thermometers; compute random-walk correlations
Problem 1: Estimating a true temperature from noisy thermometers Assume the true (fixed) temperature is an unknown constant \(\theta\). 1a) One thermo...