Pinterest Data Scientist Interview Experience — L5 Loop with Five Onsite Rounds and a BQ-Heavy XFN

Pinterest·Data Scientist·Oct 2025
OnsiteTechnical ScreenOfferhard

Let me start with the overall timeline. I interviewed for a level 5 position: one round of phone screen, five rounds of onsite, and two rounds of team matching. The whole process took about a month, and after that I waited 2-3 days for the offer.

Here's the general picture of how it went. Overall the interview had some real difficulty to it. The technical part was SQL plus Python. The SQL was on the harder side — you needed to write a lot of logic and then join, and the first question went straight into a window function. The second question had pretty complicated logic; it's a question that's already known on the forum, but I hadn't prepped SQL for it... The Python part was a pandas data-cleaning problem that needed a lambda function inside pandas, plus another one where you needed to understand dictionaries and know how to loop over them.

I signed an NDA for the onsite rounds so I won't go into the specifics, but basically all the questions are already known on the forum — it's just that every interviewer asks about them a little differently.

  • Analytical reasoning: the first part was a simple case that's already on the forum; the second part was "look at the chart and explain it."
  • Technical: SQL + Python, same difficulty as the phone screen.
  • HM (hiring manager): all behavioral questions. You really need to prepare for this one! They ask very detailed follow-ups and want specific examples.
  • XFN: also all behavioral questions. Also need to prepare well! They ask very detailed follow-ups and want specific examples — I actually think this was the hardest behavioral round. They asked 7-8 questions, and by the end I had run out of examples... I just had to force something out.
  • Stats: you need to have every test down cold! Know AB testing inside and out! Know causal inference inside and out! I'll say it a thousand times — they ask very detailed questions.

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Curated and edited by PracHub

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Interview at a glance

Company
Pinterest
Role
Data Scientist
Rounds
Technical Screen → Onsite
Outcome
Offer
Difficulty
hard
Interview date
Oct 2025
Questions from this interview
5 questions

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