Databricks interview questions

Showing 1–30 of 122 results

• Add Sliding-Window Get and Put Activity Metrics to a Key-Value StoreMedium

  Design and implement an in-memory key-value store that tracks read and write throughput (operations per second) over configurable sliding windows.

  DatabricksSoftware EngineerSoftware Engineering FundamentalsOnsite
• Answer behavioral screen questionsMedium

  Answer behavioral screen questions evaluates behavioral evidence, ownership, communication, trade-offs, and measurable outcomes in a realistic interview setting. A strong answer states assumptions, handles edge cases, explains trade-offs, and shows how to validate the result clearly.

  DatabricksSoftware EngineerBehavioral & LeadershipHR Screen
• Build a Constant-Time Snapshot Set IteratorHard

  Design a mutable ordered integer set that supports constant-time snapshot iterator creation without copying the live dataset, preserving insertion order and handling elements that are removed and re-added.

  DatabricksSoftware EngineerCoding & AlgorithmsOnsite
• Build a Durable Key-Value CacheMedium

  This question tests the ability to design a crash-recoverable key-value store by implementing a write-ahead log (WAL) to ensure data durability and system integrity after an unexpected failure.

  DatabricksSoftware EngineerSoftware Engineering FundamentalsOnsite
• Check if CIDR is fully canceled by rulesMedium

  This question evaluates understanding of IPv4 CIDR arithmetic, set operations on IP ranges (overlap detection and subtraction), and ordered rule semantics for allow/deny processing.

  DatabricksSoftware EngineerCoding & AlgorithmsTechnical Screen
• Choose fastest transportation mode on city gridMedium

  This problem tests your ability to model a grid-based transportation network as a graph and apply Dijkstra's algorithm to find the optimal path under multiple constraints.

  DatabricksSoftware EngineerCoding & AlgorithmsTechnical Screen
• Compute 5-minute rolling average loadMedium

  This problem tests your ability to maintain a rolling window average over a high-throughput stream of events using an efficient data structure that balances memory usage and query time complexity.

  DatabricksSoftware EngineerCoding & AlgorithmsTechnical Screen
• Compute last-5-minute QPS in memoryMedium

  This question evaluates design of in-memory data structures and sliding-window time-series aggregation for real-time metrics, testing understanding of space/time trade-offs, streaming algorithms, and handling monotonic timestamps.

  DatabricksSoftware EngineerCoding & AlgorithmsTechnical Screen
• Convert an IP range to minimal CIDRsHard

  This problem tests your ability to manipulate IP address representations and implement a greedy strategy to decompose an arbitrary range of IPv4 addresses into the minimum number of CIDR blocks.

  DatabricksSoftware EngineerCoding & AlgorithmsOnsite
• Current Role, Proudest Project, Disputed Feedback and Technical DisagreementMedium

  Prepare for a four-question behavioral round: describe your current role and why you want to join the company, the project you are proudest of, feedback you disagreed with and how you reacted, and a technical disagreement with a co-worker and how it was resolved.

  DatabricksSoftware EngineerBehavioral & LeadershipOnsite
• Delete a Character From CoverMedium

  This problem tests your ability to manage dynamic string indices by maintaining a set of active intervals and adjusting them efficiently after a character deletion.

  DatabricksMachine Learning EngineerCoding & AlgorithmsOnsite
• Describe project impact and critical feedbackMedium

  This question evaluates behavioral and leadership competencies such as ownership, collaboration, communication, judgment, problem-solving, and receptiveness to critical feedback through recounting project impact and responses to criticism.

  DatabricksSoftware EngineerBehavioral & LeadershipOnsite
• Describe your background and impactMedium

  This question evaluates a candidate's ability to concisely communicate a career narrative, quantify technical impact, and articulate systems engineering experience—covering roles, core technologies, system scale, measurable outcomes, and motivations.

  DatabricksSoftware EngineerBehavioral & LeadershipHR Screen
• Design BFS to detect forced win in Tic-Tac-ToeMedium

  This question evaluates algorithm design and search-space reasoning, focusing on BFS-based game-tree exploration, state representation, symmetry reduction and hashing, win/draw detection, pruning and move-ordering heuristics, and time/space complexity analysis in terms of n, k, t, and the branching factor within the Coding & Algorithms domain.

  DatabricksSoftware EngineerCoding & AlgorithmsTechnical Screen
• Design Chat APIs, Storage, and Core Message FlowsHard

  Design a highly available and consistent backend chat system focusing on APIs, storage schema, idempotent message publishing, per-conversation sequencing, and versioned group membership.

  DatabricksSoftware EngineerSystem DesignOnsite
• Design Chat APIs, Storage, and Message FlowsMedium

  Design chat APIs and database tables with durable message sends, idempotent retries, ordered history, live delivery, and reconnect recovery.

  DatabricksSoftware EngineerSystem DesignOnsite
• Design Chat Deletion Semantics Under Concurrent SendsMedium

  Design the data consistency, concurrency control, and deletion semantics for a distributed chat platform when message creation and thread deletion occur concurrently across distributed nodes.

  DatabricksSoftware EngineerSystem DesignTechnical Screen
• Design Harmful Content DetectionMedium

  This problem tests the ability to design an end-to-end machine learning system for multimodal harmful content detection at scale, focusing on pipeline architecture, latency, and data governance.

  DatabricksMachine Learning EngineerML System DesignOnsite
• Design Harmful Content and OOM DetectionMedium

  This question tests the ability to design an end-to-end ML system for real-time safety, covering taxonomy, data strategies, model architecture, and operational monitoring.

  DatabricksMachine Learning EngineerML System DesignOnsite
• Design IP/CIDR rule matcherMedium

  This question evaluates understanding of IPv4 addressing, CIDR and numeric range representations, plus competency in designing efficient data structures and algorithms for low-latency rule matching with dynamic updates.

  DatabricksSoftware EngineerCoding & AlgorithmsTechnical Screen
• Design In-Memory QPS CounterMedium

  This question evaluates the ability to design and implement an in-memory time-series counter and sliding-window aggregation, emphasizing efficient data structures, handling high-frequency events, and memory-time trade-offs.

  DatabricksMachine Learning EngineerCoding & AlgorithmsTechnical Screen
• Design KV store with sliding-window QPS metricsMedium

  This question tests the ability to design an in-memory key-value store that supports basic operations while maintaining accurate sliding-window QPS (queries per second) metrics.

  DatabricksSoftware EngineerSystem DesignTechnical Screen
• Design Messaging With Message DeletionMedium

  Design real-time messaging with conversations, history, and deletion that converges across storage layers and online or offline clients. Clarify authorization and retention, then address duplicate events, edit/reaction races, search and attachment cleanup, reconnect behavior, regional failover, audits, and strict erasure.

  DatabricksSoftware EngineerSystem DesignOnsite
• Design Retrieval for a Coding Agent: What to Index, Handling Noise, and MetricsMedium

  Design the retrieval layer that feeds code and documentation to an LLM coding agent, deciding what to index, how to split and rank it, how to handle noise, and which metrics prove it works. The question tests code-aware indexing, hybrid lexical and dense retrieval, reranking, freshness, and offline and end-to-end evaluation design.

  DatabricksSoftware EngineerML System DesignOnsite
• Design Snapshot Set Iteration and Clarify Durable WritesHard

  Design a memory-efficient snapshotting set supporting concurrent mutations and isolated iteration, and define the reliability and persistence contracts required for durable writes.

  DatabricksSoftware EngineerSoftware Engineering FundamentalsOnsite
• Design Tic-Tac-Toe and QPS data structuresMedium

  This question evaluates data-structure and API design skills, covering state management and efficient update/query algorithms for a generalized Tic-Tac-Toe with uniform-random move selection, as well as time-series aggregation and streaming-log techniques for computing QPS from non-decreasing timestamps.

  DatabricksSoftware EngineerCoding & AlgorithmsOnsite
• Design a Book Price AggregatorMedium

  Tests the ability to architect a resilient aggregation system interfacing with heterogeneous, unreliable third-party APIs under strict latency, rate-limiting, and cache consistency constraints.

  DatabricksSoftware EngineerSystem DesignTechnical Screen
• Design a Bookstore Pricing API with Batch FetchesHard

  Tests system design skills for building a high-throughput, contextual pricing service that balances HTTP protocol semantics, batch orchestration, personalized caching, and downstream protection.

  DatabricksSoftware EngineerSystem DesignOnsite
• Design a Cache with Hit CountsHard

  This question tests the ability to design a thread-safe, high-performance cache that maintains frequency metadata alongside data, requiring an understanding of efficient data structures and concurrency control.

  DatabricksSoftware EngineerSoftware Engineering FundamentalsOnsite
• Design a Chat Application with a Partitioned CacheMedium

  Design an end-to-end direct and small-group messaging system with strict delivery guarantees, message ordering, and an explicitly partitioned multi-tier caching layer.

  DatabricksSoftware EngineerSystem DesignTechnical Screen