Prepare for your Databricks engineering interview

Distributed systems and data engineering rounds calibrated to Databricks’ lakehouse-first, open-source engineering culture.

Socratify AI

The Interview

What Databricks is looking for

System Design Interview

Distributed Systems Design

01Lakehouse & Delta Lake Architecture

02Streaming vs Batch Trade-off Analysis

03Exactly-Once Semantics & ACID Transactions

04Query Optimization & Execution Planning

Coding Interview

Engineering Depth Round

01Distributed Algorithms & Concurrency

02Memory & CPU Efficiency

03API Design & Abstraction

04Testing Strategy & Correctness

Values Interview

Databricks Engineering Culture

01Open-Source First Mindset

02Customer Obsession & Technical Empathy

03Data-Driven Engineering Decisions

04Collaborative Technical Leadership

Unified lakehouse architecture expertise//Open-source and community impact//Deep distributed systems rigour

Practice Library

Databricks exercises

Ready to ace your Databricks engineering interview?

Prepare for your Databricks engineering interview

Distributed systems and data engineering rounds calibrated to Databricks’ lakehouse-first, open-source engineering culture.

Socratify AI

The Interview

What Databricks is looking for

System Design Interview

Distributed Systems Design

01Lakehouse & Delta Lake Architecture

02Streaming vs Batch Trade-off Analysis

03Exactly-Once Semantics & ACID Transactions

04Query Optimization & Execution Planning

Coding Interview

Engineering Depth Round

01Distributed Algorithms & Concurrency

02Memory & CPU Efficiency

03API Design & Abstraction

04Testing Strategy & Correctness

Values Interview

Databricks Engineering Culture

01Open-Source First Mindset

02Customer Obsession & Technical Empathy

03Data-Driven Engineering Decisions

04Collaborative Technical Leadership

Unified lakehouse architecture expertise//Open-source and community impact//Deep distributed systems rigour

How It Works

Master Databricks Engineering Interviews

Lakehouse architecture and distributed systems rounds, scored on Databricks’ engineering depth and correctness dimensions. · Click to expand

1Your Engineering Goals

System Design

Practitioner

Production Incident Diagnosis

Practitioner

2Engineering Case Prep

Design the Delta Lake write transaction protocol that ensures ACID guarantees when...

CASE INTERVIEWHard

Databricks

3Frameworks

Framework

Are availability losses (unplanned downtime) the primary driver?

Is equipment failure rate increasing on critical stations?

Servo drive on Station 7 failing twice per shift; MTBF down from 420h to 48h

Lubrication PM cycle missed for 3 consecutive weeks — maintenance log gap

Is changeover and setup time increasing?

Average changeover time up from 18 min to 41 min after operator rotation 4 weeks ago

Standard work instructions not updated for new SKU mix introduced last quarter

Are performance losses (speed below rated) contributing?

Is the line running below rated throughput speed?

Line speed throttled to 73% of rated after maintenance flag on conveyor tension sensor

Sensor last calibrated 11 weeks ago — maintenance schedule specifies 8-week cycle

Are quality losses (defects and rework) a significant factor?

Is first-pass yield declining on finished assemblies?

FPY down from 98.2% to 91.4% — three defect types now dominating scrap stream

SPC charts on torque wrench station showing process drift — tooling wear check outstanding?

4Feedback

System Design

Distinctive

Scalability & Capacity Planning

Strong

Incident Diagnosis

Meeting Bar

Engineering Communication

Strong

Repeat

Practice Library

Databricks exercises

Design the distributed query execution engine for a lakehouse that serves both streaming...

CASE INTERVIEWHard

Data & AI Platform · System DesignDatabricks

A Spark job that previously completed in 45 minutes is now taking 8 hours on the same...

LEARNMedium

Data & AI Platform · Performance DebuggingDatabricks

Design a metadata catalog for a data lakehouse that tracks schema evolution across...

LEARNHard

Data & AI Platform · Metadata ArchitectureDatabricks

Tell me about a time you made a technical decision that had a significant impact on an...

BEHAVIORALMedium

Behavioral · Technical JudgmentDatabricks

Describe a time you debugged a subtle distributed systems bug — such as a data race,...

BEHAVIORALHard

Behavioral · Production DebuggingDatabricks