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Data Manipulation and Transformation Questions

Encompasses techniques and best practices for cleaning, transforming, and preparing data for analysis and production systems. Candidates should be able to handle missing values, duplicates, inconsistency resolution, normalization and denormalization, data typing and casting, and validation checks. Expect discussion of writing robust code that handles edge cases such as empty datasets and null values, defensive data validation, unit and integration testing for transformations, and strategies for performance and memory efficiency. At more senior levels include design of scalable, debuggable, and maintainable data pipelines and transformation architectures, idempotency, schema evolution, batch versus streaming trade offs, observability and monitoring, versioning and reproducibility, and tool selection such as SQL, pandas, Spark, or dedicated ETL frameworks.

HardTechnical
66 practiced
Compare columnar formats (Parquet) and row-based formats (Avro/JSON) for intermediate storage in a transformation pipeline that must serve both OLAP analytical queries and streaming consumers. Discuss compression, read/write patterns, schema evolution, latency, and when you would pick one over the other.
MediumTechnical
73 practiced
Given transactional data (user_id, amount, occurred_at), write a SQL or pandas transform to produce a per-user summary table with columns: total_spend, last_purchase_date, avg_purchase_interval_days. Show sample input and expected output and describe edge-case handling (single purchase, null dates).
MediumTechnical
83 practiced
Outline a sequence of text cleaning steps you would apply to free-text fields for modeling: normalization, lowercasing, Unicode normalization, punctuation stripping, tokenization, stopword handling, and lemmatization. Also describe how you would preserve raw text for auditing and model explainability.
HardTechnical
76 practiced
Design a feature-store-friendly transformation pipeline that supports offline batch feature computation for model training, low-latency online feature serving for inference, consistent feature computations across offline and online paths, and versioning/lineage of feature definitions. Propose storage formats and components for this architecture.
HardSystem Design
59 practiced
Describe how to enforce and evolve schemas in a streaming pipeline using Avro/Protobuf/JSON Schema with a schema registry. Cover how to handle backward and forward incompatible changes, consumer upgrades, and requirements for replay/backfill without breaking consumers.

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