Data Engineer Interview Questions: 30 Common Pipeline and Architecture Design Questions

View profile for Nishant Kumar

Data Engineer @ IBM | 85K+ Audience | • SQL • PySpark • Airflow • AWS • Databricks • Snowflake • Kafka | AWS & Databricks Certified | Scalable Data Pipelines & Data Lakehouse | 450+ Mentorships Delivered

I have researched lots of product-based companies like Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Walmart, Paypal, Uber, Netflix, etc for DE roles and I found that these 30 Data Pipeline & Architecture Design questions are almost asked in every interviews, both at the fresher and experienced levels. 𝐁𝐞𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐫-𝐋𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐥 𝐃𝐚𝐭𝐚 𝐄𝐧𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐀𝐫𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐭𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞 𝐃𝐞𝐬𝐢𝐠𝐧 1. Design a Data Pipeline to process logs from web servers. 2. Design a batch ETL pipeline to process e-commerce transactions. 3. Design a streaming data pipeline for real-time stock prices. 4. Design a solution to ingest and store sensor data from IoT devices. 5. Design a data ingestion pipeline for CSV/JSON files from S3 to Redshift. 6. Design a user clickstream data pipeline. 7. Design a pipeline to clean and aggregate marketing campaign data. 8. Design a daily job that syncs data from MySQL to BigQuery. 9. Design a basic data lake architecture. 10. Design a system that processes and analyzes ride-sharing trip data. 11. Design a data pipeline to detect fraud in payment transactions. 12. Design a system to track real-time delivery status in a food app. 13. Design an ETL pipeline for mobile app usage metrics. 14. Design a workflow to migrate data between two cloud environments. 15. Design a pipeline to monitor and alert on data quality issues. 𝐄𝐱𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞𝐝-𝐋𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐥 𝐃𝐚𝐭𝐚 𝐄𝐧𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐀𝐫𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐭𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞 𝐃𝐞𝐬𝐢𝐠𝐧 16. Design a real-time analytics platform like Uber's Michelangelo. 17. Design a scalable log aggregation and querying system like ELK. 18. Design a CDC (Change Data Capture) system using Debezium and Kafka. 19. Design a batch + streaming hybrid architecture (Lambda/Kappa). 20. Design a warehouse architecture supporting SCD. 21. Design a distributed ETL pipeline using Spark or PySpark. 22. Design a time-series data warehouse for monitoring and IoT. 23. Design an event-driven architecture for order processing using Kafka. 24. Design a metadata management system like Apache Atlas. 25. Design a data catalog and lineage tracker. 26. Design a self-healing pipeline with retry, alert, and failover. 27. Design a real-time dashboard using Kafka + Flink + Druid. 28. Design a scalable system for A/B testing analysis. 29. Design a data pipeline to feed a recommendation engine. 30. Design a multi-tenant data platform for product analytics at scale. Start implementing to stand out in your next Data Engineer role. Join the community: https://lnkd.in/giE3e9yH - 𝐌𝐨𝐜𝐤 𝐈𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐯𝐢𝐞𝐰𝐬 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐃𝐚𝐭𝐚 𝐄𝐧𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐞𝐫𝐬: https://lnkd.in/g8Pqypt5 - 𝐈𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐯𝐢𝐞𝐰 𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐩 & 𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐧 𝐓𝐢𝐩𝐬: https://lnkd.in/gUEVYCGy - 𝐑𝐞𝐬𝐮𝐦𝐞 𝐑𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐞𝐰 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐎𝐩𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐢𝐳𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧: https://lnkd.in/gp3yZsfW 👋 Follow for more

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Pooja Jain

Storyteller | Lead Data Engineer@Wavicle| Linkedin Top Voice 2025,2024 | Globant | Linkedin Learning Instructor | 2xGCP & AWS Certified | LICAP’2022

1w

These are some of the amazing beginner/experienced level architecture design questions to master! Nishant Kumar

Lasya Nandini

Data Analyst @ HCLTech | Oracle DB | Skilled in SQL, Python, Power BI | Forecasting & Reporting

1w

Super useful list, Perfect prep material for DE interviews. Thanks for sharing Nishant Kumar.

Ravi Kumar

ETL Software Engineer, Immediate joiner

1w

Can you make cicd mechanism with Githib/AzureDevops. Automation with selenium and python automation

Khushi Singh

MS CS @ UB (SUNY) | Summer Intern at Minedco | Ex-Deloitte | Ex-KPMG

1w

This is such a valuable list — thanks for putting this together! 🙌 I’ve just started my journey into Data Engineering and am currently learning Azure Data Factory. Seeing architecture questions like “design a batch ETL pipeline” or “real-time streaming system” helps me understand what skills I should focus on. I’m currently exploring how ADF can be used for batch pipelines — would love to hear how others approached these using Azure tools.

Abhinav Girdhar

Founder at Appy Pie | Angel Investor at Abhinav Girdhar Ventures | PHD Candidate in Genarative AI l Disrupting Tech with No-Code & AI Solutions | Tech Visionary | Global Business Leader

1w

Excellent compilation—these design questions cover both fundamentals and advanced scenarios every data engineer should master.

Ramamurthy Shanmugam

Lead Data Engineer at Photon Infotech

1w

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Abhishek Agrawal

Data Engineer at ALDI DX ⭐ | Azure Data Factory | Azure Databricks | Big Data | Spark | Data Warehouse | Fabric | ☁️ Certified

1w

Great Share

Anshul Kumbhare

Turning Data into Predictive Insights | Data Scientist | KPIT Technologies | 2+ yrs in ML, Predictive Analytics & Automation.

1w

Super useful roundup, perfect for interview prep. Thanks for sharing! 

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Kunal Dulbaji

Data Engineer Apprentice@Target | Python | SQL | AI & ML | NLP | Gen AI.

1w

Great Share Nishant Kumar

Ankita Chougule

Big Data | PL-300 Certified | SQL | Hadoop | Hive | Python | Spark-SQL | Apache Spark | Azure Databricks | Azure Data Factory | Azure Synapse | PySpark | ADLS gen2 | Delta Lake | Git & Git Hub

1w

Very helpful Nishant Kumar thanks for sharing

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