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Switching stacks to data engineer role - How will the interviews work?

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Senior Software Engineer [63] at Microsoft2 years ago

Will interviews for data-related jobs at FAANG companies be different from general software jobs? Given my most recent experience is in software engineering, how can I best prepare for behavioral questions for a data related job?

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    Data Engineer @ CI Financial
    2 years ago

    Yes, although I have never actually done a FAANG interview, so take this with a grain of salt.

    From what I know, SWE interviews are made of 1) DSA 2) Systems Design 3) Behavioural

    DE interviews tend to have these rounds: 1) a SQL round; 2) Python coding (DSA light I think); 3) Data Modelling; 4) Data Architecture. Source: Zach Wilson https://www.linkedin.com/posts/eczachly_dataengineering-activity-7016121971394437120-HJpA/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_android

    There's also a behavioural round.

    For prep, I would guess they won't care too much in the behavioural rounds if you've got substantial SWE experience. You could probably just talk about that without any issues, particularly if it's backend, which is similar to DE. But also depends on the type of DE role, some are more backend-like and some are more data analyst-like.

    Hope that helps!