Problem
Scenario
You are supporting a customer-facing data pipeline and need to determine why the data in the destination looks wrong. The issue could come from the source system, or it could be introduced during ingestion, transformation, or loading.
Question
How would you investigate whether a customer's data issue is caused by bad source data or a platform problem?
What to Inspect
- Source extract payloads and timestamps
- Raw landing data before transformation
- Transformation logic and schema mappings
- Load history, retries, and duplicate handling
- Row-count and checksum reconciliation by run
Goal
Key distinction·Bad source data versus platform-introduced corruptionExpected outcome·A repeatable investigation path with evidencePrimary objective·Isolate the first stage where data diverges
Practicing as: Data Analyst interview at HD SupplyHi, I'll play your HD Supply interviewer for the Data Analyst role. Candidates describe these interviews as mostly positive and moderately difficult, so expect me to be friendly and conversational. Take your time with the question above and answer like we're in the room.
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