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Updated weekly · Last refresh Aug 30

Grainger Corporate Services Applied Scientist Interview Questions

The questions to prepare for a Grainger Corporate Services Applied Scientist interview. Questions from real interview reports rank first. Updated weekly.

21questions
~3htotal time
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1
Machine LearningStart here. 5 questions · ~40 min
Handle Highly Imbalanced ClassesMedium

Build a classifier for a highly imbalanced dataset and choose training and evaluation methods that surface rare positives.

Cross-ValidationFeature EngineeringSupervised LearningGrainger Corporate Services
XGBoost Intuition and ChoiceMedium

Tests ML fundamentals and model-selection judgment between boosting and deep learning.

model selectionEnsemble MethodsDecision TreesGrainger Corporate Services
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2
System Design5 questions · ~40 min
Design a Personalized Product RecommenderHard

Design an end-to-end product recommendation system for a large e-commerce marketplace with strict latency and freshness needs.

Feature StoreFeature DriftModel ServingGrainger Corporate Services
Design Cold Start for RecommendationsHard

Design a recommendation system strategy for model cold start and new-user cold start, including serving, evaluation, and safe rollout.

Cold StartRetrievalTwo-Tower ModelsGrainger Corporate Services
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3
Behavioral & Leadership7 questions · ~56 min
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4
More topics4 questions · ~32 min
TF-IDF vs Word EmbeddingsEasy

Explain how TF-IDF differs from word embeddings, and when each representation is a better fit for an NLP task.

Word EmbeddingsTF-IDFTokenizationGrainger Corporate Services
Optimize Slow SQL with JoinsHard

Tests practical SQL performance tuning for large-scale joined datasets.

Joinsperformancequery optimizationGrainger Corporate Services
Fine-Tuning BERT for SearchHard

Tests NLP understanding and practical fine-tuning for industrial search relevance.

transformersGrainger Corporate Services
Sessionization with Window FunctionsHard

Tests ability to use window functions for sessionization and time-gap features.

Window FunctionsLag/LeadDate FunctionsGrainger Corporate Services

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Hands-on SQL practiceWrite and run real queries in the editor. 3 drills · ~30 min
The finish line: interview-readyComplete all 21 questions plus 3 hands-on drills to finish this plan.