Staff Data Scientist Interview Questions

112 staff data scientist interview questions shared by candidates

Technical screen involved mainly SQL questions as this was for a data modeling focused role. Some on SQL logic (it's open ended, so you can answer with whatever dialect you're familiar with) and some on writing performant queries.
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Staff/Principal Data Scientist

Interviewed at Brightline

3.7
Dec 22, 2022

Technical screen involved mainly SQL questions as this was for a data modeling focused role. Some on SQL logic (it's open ended, so you can answer with whatever dialect you're familiar with) and some on writing performant queries.

How would you do this statistical analysis task, calling it "AI". However, it was mentioned every Staff Data Scientist has left because there is no role definition and they still aren't sure what the objective of the role. You will be given a take home dataset of 1000 records and are only allowed 3 hours of working time including create a presentation for 15 minutes of interviews. In my case, I used libraries I had built to do RL hyper parameter optimization with XGBoost to use PDP plots to understand which variables impacted the target variable the most. Software engineers were the interviewers that only knew XKCD memes and didn't understand basic ML.
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Staff Data Scientist

Interviewed at ezCater

2.8
Sep 5, 2025

How would you do this statistical analysis task, calling it "AI". However, it was mentioned every Staff Data Scientist has left because there is no role definition and they still aren't sure what the objective of the role. You will be given a take home dataset of 1000 records and are only allowed 3 hours of working time including create a presentation for 15 minutes of interviews. In my case, I used libraries I had built to do RL hyper parameter optimization with XGBoost to use PDP plots to understand which variables impacted the target variable the most. Software engineers were the interviewers that only knew XKCD memes and didn't understand basic ML.

1) What is central limit theorem, how do you apply it in a simulation environment. 2) Limitations of Python programming language 3) How to evaluate accuracy of ML model and reduce complexity in terms of the number of features 4) How to perform dimensional reduction 5) Describe experience related to application of theoretical concepts to real-world problems. 6) Describe a project involving E2E DS process or lifecycle
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Staff Data Scientist

Interviewed at SecurityScorecard

3.5
Oct 16, 2023

1) What is central limit theorem, how do you apply it in a simulation environment. 2) Limitations of Python programming language 3) How to evaluate accuracy of ML model and reduce complexity in terms of the number of features 4) How to perform dimensional reduction 5) Describe experience related to application of theoretical concepts to real-world problems. 6) Describe a project involving E2E DS process or lifecycle

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