Problem Solving Under Obstacles and Persistence Questions
How a candidate persists when facing technical roadblocks, resource shortages, or other obstacles. Includes troubleshooting tactics, seeking help appropriately, iterating on approaches, resilience in the face of setbacks, and examples where persistence and creativity led to problem resolution. Interviewers assess grit, adaptive strategies, and the ability to recover momentum after failed attempts.
EasyTechnical
0 practiced
Your company cannot procure an enterprise experiment-tracking tool. Describe a lightweight, reproducible experiment-tracking workflow (file formats, metadata to capture, storage, naming conventions, and minimal tooling) that a small ML team can adopt, and how you would enforce and persist the practice across engineers.
EasyBehavioral
0 practiced
Describe a situation where you needed outside help (data engineering, SRE, product) to unblock an ML project. Explain how you asked for help, coordinated across teams, escalated when necessary, and persisted through initial failed attempts or miscommunications until the problem was resolved.
MediumTechnical
0 practiced
Write a Python script that parses a simple line-based training log (e.g., lines with 'epoch=1 step=100 loss=0.345 val_loss=0.32') and detects anomalies: sudden loss spikes (>3x rolling mean), NaN occurrences, or stalled validation improvement. The script should log alerts with context and produce a short summary report of anomalies.
MediumTechnical
0 practiced
You have many hyperparameters to tune and limited compute. Propose an efficient hyperparameter-search strategy (algorithms, multi-fidelity techniques, stopping rules, and tooling) that balances exploration and cost, and describe how you would persist when results are noisy or inconclusive.
HardTechnical
0 practiced
You inherit a complex ML stack with dozens of legacy models, little documentation, and frequent incidents. Create a prioritized 12-month modernization roadmap that balances risk reduction, business continuity, and team capacity. Explain which items you do first, how you measure progress, and how you would persist when encountering organizational resistance.
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