Zillow Data Engineer Interview Questions

The questions to prepare for a Zillow Data Engineer interview. Questions from real interview reports rank first. Updated weekly.

Design a monitoring and alerting approach for a mission critical pipeline, covering system health, data quality, and operational response.

Optimize Skewed Spark Join

Medium

Optimize a Spark join where skewed keys create long-running tasks during a transaction to merchant metadata enrichment step.

Joinsperformancespark

Zillow

Handle Late Data in Batch

Medium

Approach for handling late-arriving records in a batch ETL pipeline without breaking correctness or forcing full reloads.

Batch ProcessingIdempotencyDependencies

Zillow

Backfill While Preserving Real Time

Hard

Approach for running large historical backfills without breaking real-time pipeline freshness or correctness.

Stream ProcessingDependenciesBackfilling

Zillow

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Tests your ability to implement an optimal dynamic programming or greedy solution for time-series trading logic.

Merge Overlapping Availability Ranges

Medium

Tests your ability to implement correct interval merging logic for property availability data.

intervalsSortingArray Manipulation

Zillow

O(1) Insert Delete GetRandom

Medium

Tests your ability to design efficient data structures with constant-time operations.

Hash TablesabstractionData Structures

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Technical Trade-off Under Deadline

Easy

Tests prioritization and decision-making under pressure, especially how you balance speed, quality, and long-term technical cost.

Decision MakingTrade-offsstar

Zillow

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