Databricks Software Engineer Interview Questions
141+ questions from real Databricks Software Engineer interviews, reported by candidates.
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Databricks Software Engineer Tech Phone Screen Interview Experience
The first round interview was a very short self-introduction, but the experience was good. The interviewer provided various clarifications, which were very clear. The question was to implement an OOD
Find Optimal Commute
Problem Statement You have a simplified map of San Francisco. It is a 2D grid. Each square on the grid is one of these: - `'S'`: Your Home (Start). - `'D'`: Your Office (Destination). - A digit `'1
Databricks Phone Screen
Bad interview experience (and reject). I would say I wasn\'t prepared enough for the interview since I hadn\'t seen the ip to cidr question and just understanding what cidr is...
Databricks SDE II Interview Experience: Fibonacci Trees CIDR and LLD
Hi, I had applied for the SDE-2 role at Databricks using their career portal via LinkedIn and recruiter reached out to after couple of days and scheduled my interviews one by one. # Round - 1: Technic
Phone: Classic snapshot sets VO: 1st Design WAL writer, single machine, highest throughput, log is durablely written before the call returns to the caller. 2nd. Map get and put and calculate QPS. 3rd.
Databricks Fulltime SDE Tech Phone Screen: Intermediate Coding and Array Interval Questions
Round 1: Coding Design Implement a simplified JSON parser capable of parsing custom-formatted log files or handling strings containing escape characters. The problem itself wasn't difficult. During th
You are comm
Databricks Tech Phone Screen: Anagram Index Coding Challenge
The entire phone interview lasted 60 minutes. There was a 15-minute chat before and after the coding challenge, leaving 45 minutes for coding. One problem was very concise, described in a single line:
Many posts describe Databricks' somewhat absurd processes, including references, background checks, interviewers, and the difficulty of interview questions. Here's another data point to share: TL'DR d
Freshly baked interview experience! The question was about finding a path using a Fibnaci tree, a very classic question, testing how to calculate the time complexity of recursion. After constructing t
Storefront SD: Bookseller platform (Original question from the forum). Here are some additional details: 1) This is an asynchronous request. The focus is not on how to return the request quickly, but
Databricks Tech Phone Screen: CIDR and IP Address Matching Interview
The question was about CIDR <-> IP address. Although I saw some interview experiences on the forum, the descriptions were so vague that even ChatGPT couldn't explain the specific questions or how to a
Both coding questions have appeared on this forum before. Question 1: Encoder/Decoder. There are two encoding methods given: running length and bit packing. The rule is to prioritize running length, b
This post was last edited by Anonymous on 2025-10-7 14:17. Requesting points! The following content requires points higher than 180. You can already view it. Phone: IP to CIDR VO: coding The first rou
Coding 1: Tic-Tac-Toe The follow-up requires you to add a boolean param: isAi. When isAi is reached, automatically move to the next sub. The function should allow for wins, losses, and draws. Coding 2
Databricks Software Engineer Architecture Design Interview Guide
I'm a fresh grad preparing for a Databricks interview, and there's a round called Architecture Design, but I have absolutely no idea what they're going to test. I've looked at interview experiences on
Problem Statement We need to build a system that tracks how much money customers make. This system must also handle **referrals**. If one customer invites another, the inviter gets credit based on
The Challenge Design a **thread-safe chat system** for one computer. This system needs to let many clients talk through different channels at the same time. You must handle multiple threads doing t
Anagrammed indexOf
Problem Statement Your task is to write a function that finds the **first time** an anagram of a specific pattern appears inside a larger string. **Function Signature:** ```python def anagram_index
Problem Statement Build an **encoder** and **decoder** to compress a list of 32-bit integers. You must use two specific methods: **Run-Length Encoding (RLE)** and **Bit-Packing (BP)**. The encoder
What Databricks Looks for in Software Engineer Interviews
Databricks Software Engineer interviews are calibrated against the level and scope expected of the role. Across 141+ verified candidate reports on LeakCode, the consistent signals interviewers look for: clear problem decomposition before coding, explicit complexity reasoning, structured handling of edge cases, and the ability to articulate trade-offs between two reasonable approaches.
The discriminator between candidates who advance and candidates who do not is rarely the final correctness of the solution. It is the path to the solution: did you ask clarifying questions, did you state your approach before coding, did you handle edge cases without prompting, and did you communicate your reasoning throughout. Reports tagged "no hire" frequently cite a working solution with poor communication; reports tagged "strong hire" cite clear thinking even when the final solution was incomplete.
How To Use This Question Set
Real interview reports are a calibration tool, not a memorization target. Companies update their question pools every 2-4 months; memorizing exact problems risks misleading you when the interviewer uses a variant. The high-leverage use: identify the patterns that appear repeatedly in Databricks Software Engineer reports, practice those patterns on similar (not identical) problems, and use the reports to understand the interviewer's typical follow-up depth.
Filter the questions below by round type, difficulty, and recency. Focus first on reports from the past 6-12 months; older reports may reference questions that have since rotated out of Databricks's pool. Reports tagged with quantified difficulty (e.g., "medium-hard") are higher-signal than reports without difficulty tags.
Round-by-Round Expectations
Databricks Software Engineer loops typically span 4-6 rounds across phone screens and on-site or virtual on-site interviews. The structure varies by company: some run 1 recruiter screen + 1 technical phone + 3-4 on-site rounds; others run 1 recruiter screen + 1 OA + 4-5 on-site rounds. The recruiter screen is logistics and culture-light; the technical phone screen is medium-difficulty coding; the on-site loop covers coding, system design (at L4+ levels), and behavioral rounds.
Each round is designed to surface a specific signal. Coding rounds: correctness, code quality, complexity reasoning, communication. System design rounds: requirements clarification, design judgment, operational thinking. Behavioral rounds: ownership scope, leadership, ambiguity tolerance, conflict navigation. Strong candidates explicitly hit each signal dimension out loud during the round; weak candidates focus only on solving the prompt.
Common Interview Mistakes At This Combination
Reports tagged "no hire" at Databricks Software Engineer commonly cite: jumping into code without clarifying requirements, coding silently for 10+ minutes without verbalizing approach, missing edge cases (empty input, single element, very large input, overflow), and producing a working solution that the candidate cannot explain or refactor when probed. Strong candidates avoid these patterns by following a consistent template: clarify, verbalize approach, code with narration, test with examples.
Behavioral and design rounds have their own failure modes. Behavioral: stories that use "we" instead of "I" diluting individual signal, stories with no quantified outcome, defensiveness when probed about failure. Design: not asking clarifying questions, not stating requirements out loud, designing for a single server when the prompt clearly implies scale, ignoring operational concerns (deployment, monitoring, rollback). These show up in roughly half of Databricks Software Engineer interview retrospectives on LeakCode.
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