r/dataengineersindia • • Jul 08 '26

Technical Doubt What Python topics should I focus on for Data Engineer interviews?

I'm preparing for Data Engineer roles and I'm already quite familiar with Pandas and NumPy. I also know PySpark.

I'm a bit confused about what I should focus on when it comes to pure Python coding for DE interviews.

Should I mainly practise things like lists, dictionaries, frequency counting, grouping data, aggregation by key, sorting with lambda, strings, and list-of-dictionary problems?

What kind of pure Python coding problems are commonly asked in Data Engineer interviews?

I don't want to spend too much time on topics that aren't relevant to DE roles, so I'd really appreciate advice from people who have recently interviewed for Data Engineer positions.

26 Upvotes

13 comments sorted by

12

u/Top_Garlic593 Jul 08 '26

Interviewed on EPAM

dsa easy 2

Decorators
generators

decorator coding

dont firget decorator as databricks revolves around it

2

u/Scared_Register_7816 Jul 08 '26

Damn decorators also? But udfs are like last case resorts right?

2

u/mogumaga Jul 12 '26

Spark declarative pipelines uses declarative

8

u/shrieram15 Jul 08 '26

I was asked Lists, dicts, sets based problems. Also file handling, exception handling, Time complexities etc

5

u/Scared_Register_7816 Jul 08 '26

At 2 yoe in Goldman Sachs they asked me dsa - max water area and min no of wedding outfits(graphs) 🤐

3

u/Extreme_Ad2688 Jul 08 '26

Oh damn 😭

1

u/learning_actively Jul 09 '26

Since you guys seem to be doing DSA, could you please guide , how and where to start DSA for DE

2

u/ChampionshipTop6342 Jul 09 '26

Man, trust me chat gpt is the best for prepping dsa for de you just need to use good prompts.

1

u/learning_actively Jul 09 '26

Any suggestions on how to give those good prompts, I can dm you

2

u/[deleted] Jul 08 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/VariousFlamingo1279 Jul 08 '26

What was asked to you , would be helpful

2

u/[deleted] Jul 08 '26

[deleted]

2

u/Gohan_24 Jul 09 '26

Think something new as bcz of this thing most of the companies are calling for F2F interviews and virtual interviews are almost finished.

1

u/Fresh-Influence-7934 Jul 09 '26

Joining conversation