Data Engineer Interview Questions
Practice 160 real Data Engineer interview questions for 2026. Covers companies like Meta, TikTok, RBC Royal Bank, and Point72 — real questions from actual interviews with detailed solutions. This collection of Data Engineer interview questions is designed for hands‑on interview preparation: expect live SQL and Python exercises, pipeline design and debugging, and case problems that test data modeling, throughput and latency tradeoffs. What’s distinctive about data engineering interviews is the mix of coding plus systems thinking: interviewers evaluate SQL fluency and data modeling, end‑to‑end pipeline architecture (streaming, Spark, Kafka) and data reliability/observability. Meta, TikTok, RBC Royal Bank, and Point72 are actively hiring for this role and commonly test scalable ETL design, warehouse/schema design and production reliability. To prepare, practice medium‑to‑hard SQL, build a few Spark/streaming exercises, sketch architecture tradeoffs for high‑throughput pipelines, and rehearse concise behavioral stories that show ownership and incident response.
"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."
Discuss Challenges and Career Goals
Answer the following behavioral interview questions: 1. What was the most difficult problem you have faced in your work, and how did you approach it? ...
Solve two interval array problems
You are given two interval-based tasks from a technical screen for a data engineering role. 1. Merge overlapping intervals - Input: an array of int...
Answer Amazon Behavioral Questions
Question You are in the behavioral portion of an Amazon final-round interview (Software Development Engineer internship). Prepare strong, structured r...
Write SQL for first share and closest collaborator
You are given event data about users viewing design files. Assume the following tables: - files(file_id, creator_id) - creator_id is a VARCHAR user ...
Write February Resource Usage Query
This question evaluates SQL competency in aggregation, group-level filtering, time-range handling for DATE/TIMESTAMP values, and combining results fro...
Solve SQL and Python coding tasks
You are given a small library system with the following relational schema and several Python data-processing tasks. Answer the SQL questions and imple...
Describe ETL and pipeline challenges
Question You are interviewing for a Data Engineer co-op / intern role at RBC (Royal Bank of Canada). The technical screen is a set of resume-based and...
Design KPI dashboard tables: retention, weekly rollups, timezone
Question You are designing the analytical data model behind a fast KPI dashboard for a large-scale photo-sharing app. The dashboard is reported daily ...
Explain seasons and compound interest
Answer the following basic reasoning questions: 1. Why is summer generally hotter than winter? 2. Suppose you invest $1,000 at a 100% annual interest ...
Explain How AI Changes Data Engineering Work
Explain how AI-assisted tools could reshape data engineering while preserving human accountability. Cover risk-based task boundaries, privacy, indepen...
Evaluate credit-limit increase profitability
Business/Analytics Case: Credit Limit Increase Strategy You are a data scientist supporting a consumer credit business. Scenario The company is consid...
Design an event analytics platform
This question evaluates a candidate's skills in data engineering and system design for event analytics, covering platform architecture, data ingestion...
Design Transaction Data Quality Checks
You own data quality for the same credit-card transaction dataset. transactions | column | type | description | |---|---|---| | transaction_id | integ...
Hiring Manager Behavioral Round: Project Impact, Influence, Communication, and Setbacks
Hiring Manager Behavioral Round: Project Impact, Influence, Communication, and Setbacks This is a hiring-manager video round centered on your project ...
Implement a stack supporting max and popMax
Design a data structure that behaves like a stack but also supports retrieving and removing the current maximum value. Implement a class MaxStack with...
Explain impact and partnership
Prepare for a hiring manager interview and a cross-functional partner conversation. Be ready to answer questions such as: - Why do you want to join th...
Design a schema for server engagement
You are building analytics for a chat platform similar to Discord. The raw event sources are: - server(server_id, creator_id, created_at) - server_vie...
Write SQL for basic user metrics
You are given a simplified schema for a fictional social app called Nextagram: - users(user_id PK, username, created_at TIMESTAMP) - follows(follower_...
Write SQL revenue and anomaly queries
You are given two tables. Table: transactions | Column | Type | Description | |---|---|---| | transaction_id | int | Unique identifier for each transa...
Design batch and streaming ETL architecture
Design batch and streaming ETL architecture System Design: End-to-End Data Platform for Product Analytics (Batch + Near-Real-Time) Context Design a sc...