Welcome to your interview.
The question is on your right: Optimizing Slow PostgreSQL Research Queries. Take a moment with it first.
Talk your thinking through with me if you like - when you're confident, submit your answer and I'll grade it like a real screen (7/10 or better passes). Discussion and graded submissions share your five interviewer interactions, so spend them well.
Slow SQL is common in analyst workflows, especially when joining large fact tables to supporting dimensions for recurring reporting. Interviewers want to hear how you diagnose the bottleneck, not just that you "added an index."
Describe a time when your SQL query was running too slowly. Explain how you identified the root cause, what you changed in PostgreSQL, and how you verified that performance improved. You should cover the original query pattern, whether the issue came from joins, filtering, sorting, or aggregation, and why your fix worked.
Answer at a medium level of depth. A strong response should mention how you inspected the query plan, what trade-offs you considered, and how you balanced speed with correctness and maintainability. If helpful, frame your answer around a research or reporting workflow such as analyzing customer behavior or campaign performance in a Huntington-style analytics environment.