Data Engineer
Posted Sep 30, 2026 · We last checked this listing on Oct 6, 2026
Likely interview questions for this role
Written from this job description, not a generic list. Each one notes what the interviewer is really checking.
About your past
Tell me about a time you advised a team on how to model their data. What did you recommend?
What they are checking: Whether they can act as a big data expert who helps others make good choices.
What would you do
A Kafka cluster you maintain has a broker fail during peak load. What happens and what do you do?
What they are checking: Operational knowledge of replication, leader election and recovery in a busy cluster.
A user says numbers in a dataset changed overnight with no explanation. How do you investigate?
What they are checking: Commitment to data integrity and a methodical approach to finding what changed.
Two teams want conflicting changes to a shared data platform. How do you decide?
What they are checking: Judgment in balancing user needs on shared infrastructure.
About the work
Tell me about a Kafka streaming application you built. How did you handle ordering and exactly-once processing?
What they are checking: Real depth with Kafka, which the posting asks for at three or more years.
When would you choose Flink over Spark for a pipeline?
What they are checking: Whether they understand streaming versus batch tradeoffs and pick tools on purpose.
How would you design a table format on S3 with Iceberg so researchers get fast, consistent queries?
What they are checking: Experience with modern big data backends and how partitioning and snapshots affect users.
How do you plan capacity for a data platform when usage keeps growing?
What they are checking: Whether they can forecast storage and compute needs with development teams.
What alerts would you set up in Prometheus and Alertmanager for a streaming pipeline?
What they are checking: Practical monitoring experience that catches real problems without alert fatigue.
How would you use statistics to check whether a data feed is complete and healthy?
What they are checking: Statistical analysis skills applied to data quality, which the posting lists.
How do you run Spark or Flink jobs on Kubernetes, and what problems have you hit?
What they are checking: Hands-on experience with Kubernetes and Docker for data workloads.
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Practice this out loudThe full job description
As published by IMC Trading.