1. What is a Data Engineer at Equinor?

As a Data Engineer at Equinor, you are at the forefront of the global energy transition. Equinor is evolving from a traditional oil and gas company into a broad energy major, and data is the critical asset driving this transformation. In this role, you will build the foundational infrastructure that enables everything from predictive maintenance on offshore oil platforms to the optimization of renewable wind farms.

Your impact on the business is direct and measurable. By designing, building, and maintaining robust data pipelines, you empower data scientists, operational engineers, and business leaders to make real-time, safety-critical decisions. You will work with massive volumes of structured and unstructured data, including high-frequency IoT sensor data, subsurface geological models, and commercial trading metrics.

Expect a role that balances scale, complexity, and strategic influence. You will not just be moving data from point A to point B; you will be architecting solutions that ensure data quality, reliability, and security in a highly regulated industry. This position requires technical excellence, a safety-first mindset, and a deep alignment with Equinor’s mission to provide energy for a growing population while moving toward net-zero emissions.

2. Common Interview Questions

While you cannot predict every question, understanding the patterns of what Equinor asks will help you structure your preparation. The questions below represent the types of challenges candidates frequently encounter.

Coding and SQL Assessments

These questions test your foundational ability to manipulate data and write efficient queries, often appearing in the HackerRank stage or early technical screens.

• Write a Python function to detect and remove duplicate records from a massive dataset without loading the entire dataset into memory.
• Given a table of employee records and departments, write a SQL query to find the top 3 highest-paid employees in each department.
• How would you optimize a SQL query that is performing a full table scan on a multi-billion row dataset?
• Write a script to extract data from a paginated REST API and load it into a structured format.
• Implement an algorithm to merge two overlapping time-series datasets from different sensors.

Data Engineering and Architecture

These questions gauge your system design skills and your understanding of data pipeline mechanics.

• Describe the architecture of the most complex data pipeline you have built. What were the bottlenecks?
• How do you choose between a batch processing architecture and a streaming architecture for operational data?
• Explain your approach to handling schema evolution in a data warehouse.
• Walk us through how you implement data quality checks and monitoring in your ETL pipelines.
• If a critical daily data pipeline fails at 2 AM, how do you design the system to alert you and recover gracefully?

Behavioral and Cultural Fit

Equinor uses these questions to assess your alignment with their ethos and your ability to navigate complex workplace dynamics.

• Tell me about a time you had to push back on a stakeholder's request because it compromised data quality or system stability.
• Describe a situation where you had to learn a completely new technology on the fly to deliver a project.
• How do you handle working with a team member who has a fundamentally different approach to problem-solving than you do?
• Tell me about a time a project you worked on failed. What did you learn, and how did you adapt?
• Why do you want to work for Equinor, and how do you connect with our mission in the energy transition?

3. Getting Ready for Your Interviews

Thorough preparation is essential for succeeding in Equinor’s rigorous evaluation process. Your interviewers will look beyond just your coding abilities; they want to see how you approach complex, ambiguous problems in a collaborative environment.

Focus your preparation on these key evaluation criteria:

Technical Proficiency – You must demonstrate a strong command of data engineering fundamentals. Interviewers will evaluate your ability to write efficient code (primarily Python and SQL), design scalable data models, and build robust ETL/ELT pipelines. You can show strength here by discussing specific trade-offs you have made in past architectural decisions.

Problem-Solving and Architecture – Equinor deals with massive, complex datasets. You will be assessed on your ability to design systems that handle high-volume, high-velocity data. Strong candidates will confidently navigate system design discussions, detailing how they handle data quality issues, pipeline failures, and cloud infrastructure integration.

Culture Fit and Values – Equinor places an immense emphasis on its corporate ethos: being open, collaborative, courageous, and caring. Evaluators will gauge how you fit into a culture that prioritizes safety, teamwork, and long-term sustainability over short-term fixes. You can demonstrate this by highlighting your experience working in cross-functional teams and your commitment to continuous learning.

Resilience and Patience – The hiring process at Equinor is known to be meticulous and thorough. Interviewers look for candidates who remain engaged, professional, and patient throughout extended technical and behavioral evaluations.

4. Interview Process Overview

The interview process for a Data Engineer at Equinor is comprehensive and designed to assess both your technical capabilities and your alignment with the company’s core values. Expect a multi-stage journey that is highly thorough. The pace can be deliberate, with the end-to-end process sometimes taking up to three or more months from application to offer.

Typically, the process begins with a talent acquisition phone screen to verify your background and expectations. This is often followed by an online technical assessment, such as a HackerRank test, to establish a baseline of your coding and SQL skills. Once you pass the initial screens, you will move to the core interview stages. This usually involves a technical video interview with a panel of two or more engineers, where you will dive deep into your technical expertise and problem-solving approach.

Following the technical rounds, Equinor heavily emphasizes behavioral and cultural fit. You will face a dedicated behavioral assessment—which can be notably tricky and nuanced—to gauge your alignment with the company’s ethos. The final stage often consists of an extensive, long-format interview (sometimes lasting up to 80 minutes) with HR and senior technical leadership. If successful, this is followed by a rigorous background verification before an offer is extended.

This visual timeline outlines the typical progression of the Equinor interview process, from initial screening to the final leadership round. Use this to pace your preparation, ensuring your coding skills are sharp for the early stages while reserving time to reflect on deep behavioral and architectural examples for the final rounds. Keep in mind that the timeline can stretch over several weeks, so maintaining your momentum is key.

5. Deep Dive into Evaluation Areas

To succeed, you need to understand exactly what your interviewers are looking for in each round. Equinor evaluates candidates across a blend of hard technical skills and nuanced behavioral traits.

Coding and Algorithmic Thinking

Your ability to write clean, efficient, and bug-free code is the baseline for this role. This area is heavily tested in the initial HackerRank assessment and subsequent technical video interviews. Strong performance means writing code that not only solves the problem but is also optimized for performance and edge cases.

Be ready to go over:

• SQL Mastery – Complex joins, window functions, aggregations, and query optimization.
• Python for Data Manipulation – Using pandas, dictionaries, and handling data transformations efficiently.
• Data Structures – Arrays, hash maps, and strings, particularly in the context of data parsing.
• Advanced concepts (less common) – Distributed computing concepts, complex algorithmic optimizations for large datasets.

Example questions or scenarios:

• "Write a SQL query to find the rolling average of sensor temperature readings over a 7-day window."
• "Given a messy JSON payload from an IoT device, write a Python script to parse, clean, and flatten the data."
• "Optimize this slow-running query that joins a massive fact table with multiple dimension tables."

Data Pipeline and Architecture Design

Equinor needs engineers who can build the roads, not just drive the cars. You will be evaluated on your ability to design robust ETL/ELT pipelines and cloud-based data architectures. Strong candidates will articulate the "why" behind their design choices, focusing on scalability, fault tolerance, and cost-efficiency.

Be ready to go over:

• ETL/ELT Frameworks – Extracting data from various sources, transforming it for business use, and loading it into data lakes or warehouses.
• Cloud Infrastructure – Familiarity with cloud platforms (especially Azure, which is highly utilized at Equinor) and their native data tools.
• Data Modeling – Star schema, snowflake schema, and designing tables for optimal analytical querying.
• Advanced concepts (less common) – Streaming data architectures (e.g., Kafka), CI/CD for data pipelines, Infrastructure as Code.

Example questions or scenarios:

• "Design a data pipeline that ingests daily batch data from an offshore rig, cleans it, and makes it available for a PowerBI dashboard."
• "How would you handle late-arriving data in a daily ETL job?"
• "Walk us through a time you had to redesign a data pipeline because it could no longer scale with the data volume."

Behavioral Fit and Company Ethos

Equinor takes its cultural values very seriously. The behavioral rounds are designed to see how you handle conflict, ambiguity, and teamwork. Strong performance here requires authenticity and a clear demonstration of the company's core values: open, collaborative, courageous, and caring.

Be ready to go over:

• Navigating Ambiguity – How you proceed when requirements are unclear or stakeholders disagree.
• Collaboration and Safety – How you work within cross-functional teams and prioritize reliable, safe outcomes.
• Resilience – How you handle project failures, technical debt, or shifting priorities.
• Advanced concepts (less common) – Leading without authority, driving cultural change within an engineering team.

Example questions or scenarios:

• "Tell me about a time you disagreed with a senior engineer or Tech Head about a technical implementation. How did you resolve it?"
• "Describe a situation where you had to work with incomplete data or unclear requirements from a business stakeholder."
• "How do you ensure your work aligns with a culture that prioritizes safety and long-term reliability over quick fixes?"

6. Key Responsibilities

As a Data Engineer at Equinor, your day-to-day work revolves around building and maintaining the critical data infrastructure that powers the company's operations. You will be responsible for designing scalable ETL and ELT pipelines that ingest data from a vast array of sources—ranging from legacy operational databases to real-time IoT sensors on wind turbines and oil rigs.

Collaboration is a massive part of this role. You will work closely with data scientists to ensure they have clean, reliable data for their predictive models, and with domain experts (like geologists and mechanical engineers) to understand the business context of the data. You will also partner with platform and DevOps teams to ensure your pipelines are secure, monitored, and deployed using CI/CD best practices.

Typical projects might include migrating on-premise data workloads to the cloud, building automated data quality checks to alert teams of anomalies in sensor readings, or optimizing existing data warehouses to reduce query latency for business intelligence dashboards. You are expected to take ownership of your pipelines from end to end, ensuring they are robust, well-documented, and aligned with Equinor’s strict data governance standards.

7. Role Requirements & Qualifications

To be a competitive candidate for the Data Engineer role at Equinor, you need a solid blend of technical expertise and strong interpersonal skills. The company looks for engineers who can bridge the gap between complex software engineering and critical business operations.

• Must-have skills – Advanced proficiency in Python and SQL. Deep understanding of data modeling, ETL/ELT processes, and relational database management. Experience with cloud computing platforms (Azure is highly preferred, but AWS or GCP experience is often transferable). Strong communication skills to articulate technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders.
• Nice-to-have skills – Experience with big data processing frameworks like Apache Spark or Databricks. Familiarity with streaming technologies (e.g., Kafka, Event Hubs). Knowledge of CI/CD pipelines, Docker, and Kubernetes. Previous experience working with IoT, sensor, or operational technology (OT) data.
• Experience level – Typically requires a Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, accompanied by several years of hands-on data engineering experience.
• Soft skills – A high degree of patience and resilience. The ability to collaborate seamlessly across international teams. A strong adherence to safety, quality, and company ethos.

8. Frequently Asked Questions

Q: How long does the interview process typically take? The hiring process at Equinor is known to be meticulous and can take anywhere from two to three and a half months. Patience is absolutely essential. Do not be discouraged by periods of silence; the company conducts thorough evaluations and background checks before making decisions.

Q: How difficult is the technical assessment? Candidates generally rate the difficulty as average to difficult. The HackerRank tests are rigorous but standard for the industry, focusing heavily on SQL and Python data manipulation. The technical interviews dig deep into your practical experience rather than obscure algorithms.

Q: What makes a candidate stand out in the final rounds? Successful candidates demonstrate more than just technical competence; they show a deep understanding of Equinor’s business domain and a strong alignment with the company's safety and collaborative ethos. Being able to communicate complex technical trade-offs clearly to a Tech Head or HR leader is a major differentiator.

Q: Is the behavioral test really that tricky? Yes, candidates often note that the behavioral and cultural assessments are nuanced. They are designed to push past rehearsed answers to genuinely understand your working style, your integrity, and how you handle pressure and conflict. Answer honestly and rely on the STAR method (Situation, Task, Action, Result).

Q: What is the working culture like for a Data Engineer? Equinor offers a Scandinavian working culture that highly values work-life balance, psychological safety, and continuous learning. However, because you are dealing with critical energy infrastructure, the engineering standards are extremely rigorous, and attention to detail is paramount.

9. Other General Tips

• Embrace the Energy Transition: Equinor is actively transforming its business. Show that you understand the challenges of managing data for both traditional oil/gas operations and emerging renewable energy sources like offshore wind.
• Master the STAR Method: For the extensive behavioral rounds (including the 80-minute final interview), structure your answers clearly. Detail the Situation, Task, Action, and Result, ensuring you highlight your specific contributions.
• Prepare for Panel Interviews: You will likely face two or more interviewers on video calls. Practice maintaining eye contact (looking at the camera), addressing all panel members, and remaining calm if they challenge your architectural choices.

• Show Your Workings: During technical discussions, interviewers care as much about your thought process as the final answer. Talk out loud, explain your assumptions, and be open to hints or pivots suggested by the interviewers.
• Patience is a Virtue: Given the lengthy timeline, follow up professionally but avoid being overly aggressive. Use the time between rounds to research the company's recent projects and technological investments.

10. Summary & Next Steps

Securing a Data Engineer role at Equinor is a challenging but highly rewarding endeavor. You will be stepping into a position that is critical to the future of global energy, working with massive datasets to solve real-world problems. The scale of the work is immense, and the opportunity to drive meaningful change is unparalleled.

To succeed, you must bring a balanced approach to your preparation. Sharpen your Python and SQL skills for the initial HackerRank and technical screens, but dedicate just as much time to refining your system design narrative and behavioral examples. Remember that Equinor is looking for team players who embody their ethos of being open, collaborative, courageous, and caring. Be prepared for a thorough, multi-month process, and maintain your patience and professionalism throughout.

This compensation data reflects the expected salary range and components for a Data Engineer. Keep in mind that total compensation at Equinor often includes strong benefits, pension contributions, and performance bonuses, which may vary based on your location and seniority level.

You have the skills and the drive to excel in this process. Approach every interview as a conversation and an opportunity to showcase your passion for data and engineering excellence. For further insights, peer experiences, and targeted practice, continue exploring resources on Dataford. Good luck—your journey to shaping the future of energy starts here.