Overview
Databricks has a reputation for one of the tougher loops around. Experienced candidates describe medium-to-hard coding problems, a lot of concurrency, and system design interviewers who go deep into implementation details. New-grad screens tend to be closer to standard LeetCode.
Candidates report writing and running test cases in coding rounds, so expect to get working code, not pseudocode. Many loops also have a single-machine round that candidates call systems programming, where you build something like a multi-threaded logger.
Below is what people get asked in each one and what to study.
System design interviews
Expect interviewers to dig past the diagram into how things actually work: concurrency, failure recovery and making sure money and data stay correct.
What people get asked
- Design a game payment system
- Build a multi-threaded log writer
- Design a book price aggregator
- Design a distributed job scheduler
Coding interviews
Problems run medium to hard, and interviewers often want working code that runs. Trees, data structures, IP ranges and compression have all come up.
What people get asked
- Find paths in a Fibonacci tree
- Build a compression encoder
- A set you can snapshot
- IP firewall with CIDR rules
The rest of the process
Your recruiter will walk you through this, but here's the quick version.
| Stage | Length | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| Recruiter screen | 30 min | Your background and the role |
| Technical screen | 60 min | Usually one coding problem in a shared editor, sometimes a design question instead |
| Onsite coding | 1–2 rounds | Code that runs and passes test cases |
| Design rounds | 1–2 rounds | Distributed system design, and often a systems programming round on one machine |
| Behavioral | About 1 hour | Past projects, often with a hiring manager or director |
Sources
We pulled this together from candidates' own write-ups of their interviews. They don't always agree, and things change over time.
- LeetCode Discuss: senior onsite, payments and log writer
- LeetCode Discuss: SDE II loop (Fibonacci tree, CIDR)
- LeetCode Discuss: L5 phone screen, CIDR firewall
- Jointaro: backend SWE, Belgium (2025)
- Jointaro: senior SWE screen, SnapshotSet (2023)
- 1point3acres: onsite, encoder and SnapshotSet
- 1point3acres: onsite, job scheduler and book buying service
- Glassdoor: new grad SWE reviews (House Robber, 2025)
Practice Loop is an independent practice tool and isn't affiliated with or endorsed by Databricks.