Demystifying

Data Science
Interviews
Losers have goals, winners have systems
- Scott Adams
Outline
- Introduction
- Data Science Lifecycle Process to Role Matrix
- Data Science Interview Steps
- Takeaways
- Q&A
Introduction
Vimarsh Karbhari Johannes Giorgis
- Software Engineering Manager - Senior Software Engineer

- Security, E-commerce, Recruiting - Financial Technology, IoT, Recruiting

- Software Development, Data Science - Software Development, Data Science

- Acing AI Blog Cloud Infrastructure

What do the roles look like?
Role Description

Data Scientist - Analytics Defines and monitors metrics. Provides narratives and trends.
E.g. Google Trends

Data Scientist - ML Builds ML models that power data products and features.
E.g. Uber ATG

Data Scientist - Statistics Derives and uncovers relationship between data points.
E.g. Stitch Fix

Data Scientist - Researcher Google Brain, OpenAI, Facebook AI Researcher

Data Engineer - Data Pipelines Builds and designs data pipelines to deposit data into a data lake.

Data Engineer - ML Build ML models and designs applications to leverage models for products and features.
E.g. Uber ATG

Data Engineer - Infrastructure Deploy and Productize data science apps for products.
Eg. Google Maps

Data Analyst Data analysis and reporting

Process -> Ideation Data Research and Validation Delivery Monitoring
• Requirements Acquisition Development • Business • Product • Performance
and ETL • Experiment Validation Delivery
• ROI • Usage
Roles • Existing Processes • Data • Modelling • Technical
| Pipelines • Software Dev Validation
• Data
V Exploration

Data Scientist

Data Engineer

Data Science
Manager
Data Analyst

Product
Manager/
Stakeholder
 Data Science Interview Process

Apply OR HR Phone Take Home On Site

Education Negotiation
HR Reach out Screen Assessments Interviews
Phone Screen
- Human Resources
- 15 - 30 min
- Your backgrounds, goals, interests
- Technical
- 30 - 60 min
- SQL/Data Analysis/Software Engineering
- Past Projects Discussion
Ace Phone Screen
- Human Resources
- Be enthusiastic
- Passionate about your interests
- Show you’ve done your homework
- Technical
- Know your fundamentals!
- Practice different types of problems
- Practice communicating technical information
Take Home
- Timed Hackerrank Challenges
- 1.5 - 2 hours, 3 - 5 easy - medium questions
- Coding Challenge
- 1 - 7 days, 1 - 3 questions/test cases
- Data Analysis/SQL Challenge
- 1 - 3 days, 1 - 5 questions, 1 - 2 datasets
- Data Science Paper Challenge
- Implement a paper and present
Ace Take Home
- Efficient Algorithms and Data Structures
- Edge Cases
- Consider your constraints!
- Practice
- 100 LeetCode/HackerRank problems
- EDA on available datasets
- SQL queries on databases
- Be consistent in your preparation!
On Site
- SQL Interview
- Whiteboard System Design
- Coding
- Query/Database Optimization
- Behavioral/Cultural Fit
- Paper Presentation
- Bar Raiser
Ace On Site
- Know your interviewers - LinkedIn, Company Blog
- Ask about the nature of each interview in advance
- Ask the recruiter about relevant resources/blog links
- Know your resume
- Know your projects in depth and breadth
- Be prepared to add as much detail when asked about it
- SQL Interview
- Nested SQL Queries. Explain your solution as you write the query
Ace On Site
- ML System Design
- Depth over breadth is preferred on any system design interview
- Designing a system you have built in the past
- Coding Interview
- Practice Leetcode, ML Algorithms
- Behavioral/Cultural Fit (STAR technique)
- Provide example in detail to scenario based questions
- Demonstrate the ability to present data products
Ace On Site
- Paper Presentation (Researchers)
- Present a paper to a panel of researchers
- Diagrams and pictures work better than text

- Ask questions

- Ask relevant questions to each of the interviewers

- Ask about challenges, wins, growth for starters

 Resources Mock Interview Practice
- Pramp
- Gainlo

Apply OR HR Phone Take Home On Site

Education
HR Reach out Screen Assessments Interviews

Matching/Discovering Opportunities Take Home Practice

- TripleByte - Acing AI Interview Series
- Hired - HackerRank - Interview Preparation Kit
- Seen - LeetCode
- Interview Cake
Acing Data Science Interviews

- Self Paced
- Hours of video sessions covering each topic from SQL to ML System Design
- Exclusive Content - Company blogs research coupled with our database of questions
- Cover the full interview lifecycle
- Private Slack Community
- 1 Year access to everything

Join the April cohort

Keep Learning!
- Acing AI: Great Data Science Company Blogs

- Ultimate List of Data Science Podcasts

- Youtube: Two Minute Papers

Q&A

Email us: [email protected]