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How To Prepare For Amazon Data Engineer Interview

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Learn how to prepare for Amazon data scientist interview

In this interview series, I summarize interview experiences from people Ive helped with interview preparation. Patrick is a Senior data scientist working in one of the coldest place in the North America. I hope it helps you in preparing for Amazon Data scientist interview.

Interview Prep The Tl dr Version

If you have only a few days to prepare for your interview, make sure to understand the topics shown below.

  • Python: Basic data structures, Easy and medium problems from the blind 75 list.
  • Answering business questions with SQL: You will be given a set of tables and asked a business question. Usually, the tables have the same name as the business process/entity.
  • Data pipeline design: You will be asked to design a data pipeline. Make sure to understand the objective of the data pipeline. Some common questions in this section are, “How do you design a clickstream data storage system?”, and, “How would you use CDC pattern to replicate OLTP tables into a data warehouse?”. The interviewer will want to understand if you think about data lineage, schedule , data duplication, scaling, loading data, testing, and end-user access patterns.
  • Hiring Decision Process For The Amazon Business Intelligence Engineer Role

    Amazon has a concept of bar raisers. A bar raiser is assigned to each interview to ensure each new hire is better than at least 50% of their workforce. Each interviewer except the bar raiser has equal weightage in the hiring decision. The bar raiser holds veto power to either accept or reject a candidate. You will not know the bar raiser for your interview, but you need to show what makes you better than 50% of their workforce.

    After the onsite interview, the hiring committee discusses and analyzes how you align with Amazonâs values and leadership principles. Each member may be assigned two to three leadership principles to evaluate you on.

    The discussion might raise concerns if your answers diverged from their leadership principles too much, which could lead to rejection via the bar-raiser veto. For example, in an answer, you may have shown focus on competition over customers. That answer shows your traits are orthogonal to customer obsession.

    If youâre a good fit for Amazon but arenât a good fit for that team, other hiring managers might interview you further to position you appropriately within the company. If youâre selected, you can also discuss your salary and job expectations after you receive the selection call from your onsite interview. You can expect the call in a day or so.

    Recommended Reading: Who Was Interviewed On Npr This Morning

    Talk Your Way Through Your Thought Process

    It is natural for candidates to get focused when coding or facing a schema design problem. As a result, they go silent, which makes them inscrutable to the interviewer. Although it is odd to talk your way through the problem-solving process, it is vital to do so. So, explicitly practice and develop a habit of being communicative while solving a problem.

    Books To Read To Help Prepare For Amazon Data Engineer Interview

    How to Prepare for Amazon Software Development Engineering ...
    • âDW 2.0: The Architecture for the Next Generation of Data Warehousingâ â W.H. Inmon
    • âAgile Data Warehouse Design: Collaborative Dimensional Modeling, from Whiteboard to Star Schemaâ â Lawrence Corr
    • âThe Data Warehouse Toolkit: The Definitive Guide to Dimensional Modelingâ â Ralph Kimball
    • âThe Data Engineering Cookbook â â Andreas Kretz
    • âLearning Spark â â Holden Karau
    • âSpark: The Definitive Guide: Big Data Processing Made Simpleâ â Bill Chambers
    • âBig Data: Principles and Best Practices of Scalable Realtime Data Systemsâ â Nathan Marz

    Also Check: How Does A Phone Interview Work

    What Are The Sample Questions In This Book

    • What is the difference between ROLLBACK TO SAVEPOINT and RELEASE SAVEPOINT?
    • How will you see the current user logged into MySQL connection?
    • Can we create multiple tables in Hive for a data file?
    • Can we use Hive for Online Transaction Processing systems?
    • Can we use same name for a TABLE and VIEW in Hive?
    • How can we get a random number between 1 and 100 in MySQL?
    • How can you copy the structure of a table into another table without copying the data?
    • How can you find 10 employees with Odd number as Employee ID?
    • How does CONCAT function work in Hive?
    • How will you change the data type of a column in Hive?
    • How will you check if a file exists in HDFS?
    • How will you check if a table exists in MySQL?
    • How will you run Unix commands from Hive?
    • How will you search for a String in MySQL column?
    • How will you see the structure of a table in MySQL?
    • How will you select the storage level in Apache Spark?
    • How will you synchronize the changes made to a file in Distributed Cache in Hadoop?
    • If we set Replication factor 3 for a file, does it mean any computation will also take place 3 times?
    • Is it safe to use ROWID to locate a record in Oracle SQL queries?
    • What are different Persistence levels in Apache Spark?
    • What are the common Transformations in Apache Spark?

    What Are The Types Of Hadoop Configurations

    Flash that Hadoop swagger.

    If you work as a data engineer, youre going to work with Hadoop. Businesses use Hadoop as a means of distributed processing and storage of big data its an open-source framework that works wonderfully to create as many concurrent tasks as you can dream of creating. Youll get all kinds of Hadoop-based questions in your interview, including questions that relate to configurations. Prepare a quick answer, and impress your future boss.

    Hadoop has four configuration files: Yarn-site.xml, Core-site.xml, Hdfs-site.xml, and Mapred-site.xml. Yarn-site.xml has a config file that establishes settings for NodeManager and ResourceManager. Meanwhile, Core-site.xml contains core config settings for Hadoop elements like I/O settings. Use Hdfs-site.xml for HDFS daemon settings and to specify replication checking and default block permission. Finally, you would use Mapred-site.xml to list a framework name for MapReduce.

    And there you go, beautiful people. Data engineering jobs are growing in number and importance, and you can get on board. Weve created a guide to lay out the data engineer interview questions youre most likely to run across in your job search. Before long, youll be prepared to take on any interview questions and come up smiling.

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    In Your Opinion What Does A Data Engineer Majorly Do

    A Data Engineer is responsible for a wide array of things. Following are some of the important ones:

    • Handling data inflow and processing pipelines
    • Maintaining data staging areas
    • Responsible for ETL data transformation activities
    • Performing data cleaning and the removal of redundancies
    • Creating ad-hoc query building operations and native data extraction methods

    If you are considering becoming proficient in Data Analytics and earn a certification while doing the same, make sure to check out IntellipaatsData Analytics Certification.

    What Do You Need To Become A Data Engineer

    Interview: Amazon Data Engineer (Majoring in Computer Science to working as Data Engineer)

    Gotta have a working toolkit of skills to be a data engineer.

    Your data engineer interview is going to be a mix of whiteboard questions and questions that tease out your background and expertise. Dont be surprised to run across a few questions that require broad knowledge and show off a solid foundation. To that end, youre likely to get a variant of the question, Describe the skills you need to become a data engineer. Having a ready reply is crucial if you want to win the gig.

    While there are all sorts of replies you can make to this question and still be accurate, youll want to include a few fundamentals. You need a solid math background, of courseprobability and linear algebra are essential here. A few statistics courses such as trend analysis and regression are also a must. Youll also need loads of language software experience and should be well versed in Python, SAS, Hive QL, and machine learning, for starters.

    Also Check: What Are Questions That Are Asked In Interviews

    What Is Serde In Hive

    SerDe stands for Serialization and Deserialization in Hive. It is the operation that is involved when passing records through Hive tables.

    The Deserializer takes a record and converts it into a Java object, which is understood by Hive.

    Now, the Serializer takes this Java object and converts it into a format that is processable by HDFS. Later, HDFS takes over for the storage function.

    Next up on these top Data Engineer interview questions, we have to check out a very important question asked frequently as a part of Data Engineer Amazon interview questions.

    Amazon Data Engineer Interview Strategy

  • Express your thoughts. Dont be nervous.
  • Take the hints. Interviews are helpful and may give you a push if you are stuck. Learn to catch those hints.
  • It is okay if the first solution that comes into your mind is not perfect. Discuss all the solutions that cross your mind.
  • Keep your code neat and clean. The interviewers check the time complexity of your code and how easy it is to maintain.
  • Dont quit. Keep trying to solve the problem from a variety of angles.
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    Data Engineer Interview Questions To Help You Prepare

    Receiving an interview request for a data engineer job is a key step toward obtaining the career you want. A job interview gives you a chance to impress your potential employer and encourage them to view you as an excellent candidate. To get ready for your job interview, think over your answers to both general questions and in-depth inquiries into your experience and background. In this article, we discuss 50 common data engineer interview questions and share some sample answers to help you prepare.

    Amazon Interview Experience For Sde 1

    Top 25 amazon data engineer 2 interview questions and ...
  • Last Updated :10 Nov, 2021

    I was reached by a Talent Acquisition Specialist from Amazon via my Instahyre profile a month ago for the SDE 1 Position.

    Fast forward to that , I was informed that as a selection procedure there would be 5 rounds total .

    Hey geek! It’s time to become a success story instead of reading them. Check out our most renowned DSA Self Paced Course, now at a student-friendly price and become industry ready. And if you are looking for a more complete interview preparation resource, check out Complete Interview Preparation Course that will prepare you for the SDE role of your dreams!

    Feeling prepared enough for your interview? Test your skills with our Test Series that will help you prepare for top companies like Amazon, Microsoft, TCS, Wipro, Google and many more!

    I cleared the OA round. The further interviews went like this.

    Round 1 :

  • There are N gas stations along a circular route, where the amount of gas at the ith station is gas. You have a car with an unlimited gas tank and it costs cost of gas to travel from the ith station to its next th station. You begin the journey with an empty tank at one of the gas stations. Given two integer arrays gas and cost, return the starting gas station.
  • Bottom view of binary tree in both BFS and DFS.
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    Top 30 Aws Cloud Support Engineer Interview Questions And Answers

    Searching for AWS Cloud Support Engineer interview questions and answers to crack the interview in the first attempt? Youve reached the destination.

    AWS is a cloud storage service offered by Amazon for reducing the issues of data storage. When you want to grow up your business, this kind of storage can help you in so many terms. In order to get AWS jobs, the desired candidates first need to crack the interview of AWS.

    In this blog, you can check and understand top AWS Cloud Support Engineer Interview Questions to prepare much better for your AWS Cloud Support interview. If youre looking for more interview questions for other AWS job roles, check out our previous article that covers the top 50 AWS interview questions.

    Sometimes, AWS Cloud is termed as the combination of laaS, Paas and SaaS. And your role in such job of Cloud Support Engineer will be to provide the required technical help & support to the customers of AWS. Candidates can prefer their working shifts just after cracking the interview.

    What Is The Biggest Professional Challenge You Have Overcome As A Data Engineer

    Hiring managers often ask this question to learn how you address difficulties at work. Rather than learning about the details of these difficulties, they typically want to determine how resilient you are and how you process what you learn from challenging situations. When you answer, try using the STAR method, which involves stating the situation, task, action and result of the circumstances.

    Example:âLast year, I served as the lead data engineer for a project that had insufficient internal support. As a result, my portion of the project fell behind schedule and I risked disciplinary measures. After my team missed the first deadline, I took the initiative to meet with the project manager and proposed possible solutions. Based on my suggestions, the company assigned additional personnel to my team and we were able to complete the project successfully within the original timeline.â

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    Best Amazon Data Engineer Interview Tips With Practice Questions And Answers

    20 Best Amazon Data Engineer Interview Tips with Practice Questions and Answers

    This post gives detailed information and tips to help you prepare effectively for a data engineer interview at Amazon.

    It also provides likely questions which may be asked, as well as answers, that you can use for practice in your preparation for the Amazon data engineer interview.

    its no longer news that you should not be quiet when you are asked if you have questions to ask at the interview. With that in mind, the questions you can also ask are covered in this post.

    Please read on:

    Getting a job as a data engineer is not an easy task, let alone getting it in a company such as Amazon, and yet, it is possible to get one.

    In this post, you will find all that will help you land the data engineering job that you desire.

    Faqs On Amazon Software Development Engineer Interviews

    Data Engineer-1 Interview Experience | In Covid Times | Bar Raiser ð¥

    1. What’s Amazon’s Software Development Engineer interview process, and how do I get started?

    Amazonâs interview process for SDEs looks something like this:

  • Application Process
  • Phone Screen: 1-2 interviews
  • Onsite Interview: 4-6 interviews
  • 2. At Amazon software engineer interviews, do I need to qualify every round to get an offer?

    Yes, at Amazon tech interviews, you need to pass every round to be able to qualify for the next.

    3. What is the Amazon âBar Raiserâ interview?

    Amazonâs Bar Raiser interview is conducted by experts to see that for each competency that they test, you are least as good as or better than the average Amazon SDE. It is a crucial step in Amazonâs hiring decision process.

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    What Is The Data Science Role

    The role of a data scientist at Amazon depends on the specific team. Amazon is a large conglomerate corporation with many teams working on different products and services.

    Theseteams include AWS , Alexa, forecasting team in the Supply Chain Optimization Technologies , the NASCO Team , Middle Mile Planning Research and Optimization Science team, and many more.

    General requirements are:

    • Designing, developing, evaluating, deployment and updating of data-driven models and analytical solutions for machine learning and natural language applications.
    • Develop cutting edge data pipelines, build accurate predictive models, and deploy automated software solutions to provide forecasting insights.
    • Research, design, and improve models with business impact in mind.

    Required Skills

    Python Interview Questions For Data Engineers

  • Differentiate between *args and **kwargs.

    • *args in function definitions is used to pass a variable number of arguments to a function when calling the function. By using the *, a variable associated with it becomes an iterable.

    • **kwargs in function definitions is used to pass a variable number of keyworded arguments to a function while calling the function. The double star allows passing any number of keyworded arguments. The variable associated with ** is treated as a dictionary, which maps each keyword to the value passed along with it.

  • What is the difference between is and ==?

  • The is operator in Python is used to check whether two variables point to the same object. == is used to check whether the values of two variables are the same.

    E.g. consider the following code:

    c = b

    a == b

    evaluates to true since the values contained in list a and list b are the same.

    Evaluates to false, since a and b refers to two different objects.

    c is b

    Evaluates to true, since c and b are pointing to the same object.

  • How is memory managed in Python?

  • Memory in Python is arranged in the following way:

  • What is a decorator?

  • A decorator is a tool in Python which allows programmers to wrap another function around a function or a class to extend the behavior of the wrapped function without making any permanent modifications to it.

  • Are lookups faster with dictionaries or lists in Python?

  • How can you return the binary of an integer?

  • How can you remove duplicates from a list in Python?

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    Practice Will Make You Perfect

    There are tons of resources online that can help you build these skills and practice them regularly.

    Use platforms like Leetcode and Hacckerank to practice and advance your skills with daily practice. You can also equip yourself by watching Amazon Data Engineer preparation videos.

    Check out the previous Amazon Data Engineer Interview Questions and experiences on Glassdoor. This will give you an idea of what to expect during the interview process.

    If you are wondering how to prepare for Data engineering jobs, the aforementioned KCE process will prove beneficial in your preparation.

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