Technical Foundation and Self Assessment Questions

Covers baseline technical knowledge and the candidate's ability to honestly assess and communicate their technical strengths and weaknesses. Topics include fundamental infrastructure and networking concepts, operating system and protocol basics, core development and platform concepts relevant to the role, and the candidate's candid self evaluation of their depth in specific technologies. Interviewers use this to calibrate how technical the candidate is expected to be, identify areas for growth, and ensure alignment of expectations between product and engineering for collaboration.

MediumTechnical

43 practiced

A critical report uses filters on customer_id and a date range and aggregates revenue by product_id. Which indexing strategies would you consider (single-column, composite, covering indexes) to accelerate queries, and how would you measure their impact? Discuss trade-offs and maintenance implications.

HardTechnical

62 practiced

A complex SQL report joins five large tables and uses multiple window functions and subqueries; it now times out. Provide a step-by-step optimization plan including: using EXPLAIN ANALYZE, rewriting window functions, pre-aggregating, materialized views, partitioning, and indexes. Give at least one concrete rewrite example that reduces cost.

MediumTechnical

48 practiced

Write pseudocode or a PostgreSQL stored procedure pattern to backfill a daily_aggregates table for a given date range by computing totals from transactions. Ensure the operation is idempotent (safe to rerun), minimizes locks, and describe how you would schedule and monitor the backfill job.

MediumBehavioral

49 practiced

Tell me about a time you disagreed with a stakeholder about the definition of an important metric. What was the metric, why did you disagree, how did you present evidence, what compromise or decision was reached, and what did you document to prevent future ambiguity? Use the STAR format.

EasyTechnical

36 practiced

Explain primary keys and foreign keys and why they matter in BI pipelines. Give a concrete example of an error in reporting caused by missing or incorrect keys, and describe how you would detect and fix that issue in the data pipeline.

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