Interview questions
Preparing for a data engineering interview at Altimetrik? This page contains 31 real interview questions sourced from verified Altimetrik interview experiences. Questions are sorted by frequency — the ones asked most often appear first.
Altimetrik data engineering interviews typically focus on Spark/Big Data, Python/Coding, and SQL. There's a solid mix of fundamental and advanced questions, making it accessible for candidates at multiple experience levels.
Use the difficulty filters above to focus your preparation. For each question, attempt your own answer first, then compare with our expert solution. You can also practice these questions in our AI Mock Interview Coach for real-time feedback.
Tell me about yourself and your experience.
What is the difference between SparkSession and SparkContext in Spark?
What are traits in Scala, and how are they different from classes?
What are Airflow Operators? Give examples.
How would you read data from a web API? What steps would you follow after reading the data?
Architecturally, how would you justify or challenge Hadoop vs. a cloud-native data lake (S3 + EMR/Databricks) for a greenfield enterprise data platform? Discuss scalability ceilings, cost model trade-offs, and operational complexity.
How would you read data from a web API using PySpark?
What is broadcasting in Spark, and why is it used? Can you give an example of its use?
What is the difference between Managed and External Tables in Databricks?
What is the difference between map and flatMap in Spark, and when would you use each?
What work is done by the executor memory in Spark?
When and how do you use Broadcast Join?
Why is SparkSession used in Spark 2.0 and later versions?
Write a Python script to find the count of each word in a text file using Spark.
Write the PySpark code to find the second highest salary in each department.
Explain the difference between a list and a tuple in Python.
How do you handle exceptions in Python? Provide an example.
What is the difference between shallow copy and deep copy in Python?
Write a Python function to find the first non-repeating character in a string.
What are decorators in Python, and how do they work?
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