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31+ Databricks questions

Databricks interview questions and how to prepare

The questions candidates report from Databricks interviews, sorted by how often they come up, with difficulty and topics, plus original practice written in Databricks's interview style.

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ZorixOS tracks 31 community-reported Databricks interview questions, drawn from an open-source dataset of real interview reports and sorted by how frequently each one comes up. Every question links to its source. Alongside them are 78 original ZorixOS practice questions written in Databricks's known interview style (not claimed as asked at Databricks), so you can rehearse the real format. Practice any of them out loud in a free AI mock interview tuned to Databricks.

Updated July 2026

Databricks interview questions candidates report

Community-reported from real Databricks interviews (open-source dataset), most-asked first. Showing 31. Each links to its source.

  1. Design Hit Counter
    ArrayBinary SearchDesignQueue
    Medium100% asked
  2. Find All Anagrams in a String
    Hash TableStringSliding Window
    Medium100% asked
  3. IP to CIDR
    StringBit Manipulation
    Medium98% asked
  4. Design Tic-Tac-Toe
    ArrayHash TableDesignMatrix
    Medium95% asked
  5. House Robber
    ArrayDynamic Programming
    Medium87% asked
  6. Shortest Path in a Grid with Obstacles Elimination
    ArrayBreadth-First SearchMatrix
    Hard87% asked
  7. Step-By-Step Directions From a Binary Tree Node to Another
    StringTreeDepth-First SearchBinary Tree
    Medium84% asked
  8. House Robber II
    ArrayDynamic Programming
    Medium83% asked
  9. Time Based Key-Value Store
    Hash TableStringBinary SearchDesign
    Medium82% asked
  10. Closest Leaf in a Binary Tree
    TreeDepth-First SearchBreadth-First SearchBinary Tree
    Medium65% asked
  11. Longest Palindrome by Concatenating Two Letter Words
    ArrayHash TableStringGreedy
    Medium65% asked
  12. RLE Iterator
    ArrayDesignCountingIterator
    Medium65% asked
  13. Snapshot Array
    ArrayHash TableBinary SearchDesign
    Medium64% asked
  14. Number of Recent Calls
    DesignQueueData Stream
    Easy63% asked
  15. Split Message Based on Limit
    StringEnumeration
    Hard58% asked
  16. Text Justification
    ArrayStringSimulation
    Hard58% asked
  17. Unique Paths III
    ArrayBacktrackingBit ManipulationMatrix
    Hard55% asked
  18. Permutation in String
    Hash TableTwo PointersStringSliding Window
    Medium52% asked
  19. Longest Mountain in Array
    ArrayTwo PointersDynamic ProgrammingEnumeration
    Medium45% asked
  20. Number of Flowers in Full Bloom
    ArrayHash TableBinary SearchSorting
    Hard45% asked
  21. Shortest Path in Binary Matrix
    ArrayBreadth-First SearchMatrix
    Medium45% asked
  22. Spiral Matrix
    ArrayMatrixSimulation
    Medium45% asked
  23. Minimum Cost to Reach Destination in Time
    ArrayDynamic ProgrammingGraph Theory
    Hard43% asked
  24. Minimum Knight Moves
    Breadth-First Search
    Medium43% asked
  25. Count Integers in Intervals
    DesignSegment TreeOrdered Set
    Hard38% asked
  26. Find the Length of the Longest Common Prefix
    ArrayHash TableStringTrie
    Medium38% asked
  27. Finding Pairs With a Certain Sum
    ArrayHash TableDesign
    Medium38% asked
  28. Merge Intervals
    ArraySorting
    Medium38% asked
  29. String to Integer (atoi)
    String
    Medium38% asked
  30. Rotting Oranges
    ArrayBreadth-First SearchMatrix
    Medium35% asked
  31. Two Sum
    ArrayHash Table
    Easy35% asked

Practice questions in Databricks's style

Original ZorixOS questions written the way Databricks interviews, so you rehearse the real format. Not claimed as asked at Databricks.

  1. Imagine a customer is reporting extremely slow query performance on a large Delta Lake table, with queries taking hours instead of minutes. What are the first 3 things you would investigate on the Databricks platform to diagnose this performance issue?

    Software EngineerDebuggingTests: Evaluates debugging skills and understanding of distributed systems performance bottlenecks.

  2. A user is experiencing frequent `OutOfMemoryError` exceptions when processing a multi-terabyte dataset using Spark on Databricks. Describe how you would approach optimizing their Spark job configuration and data partitioning strategy to mitigate this.

    Software EngineerSystem DesignTests: Tests knowledge of Spark memory management, performance tuning, and distributed data processing techniques.

  3. You've just pushed a new feature for the Databricks SQL Warehouse that allows users to define custom UDFs in Python. A critical bug is reported where a specific UDF is causing deadlocks under high concurrency. Outline your debugging strategy, including potential causes and how you'd use Databricks logs and monitoring tools to pinpoint the issue.

    Software EngineerDebuggingTests: Assesses ability to debug complex concurrent systems and leverage platform-specific tooling.

  4. Design a system for real-time anomaly detection on streaming data ingested into a Databricks Lakehouse. Consider scalability, fault tolerance, and how alerts would be triggered and managed within the Databricks ecosystem.

    Software EngineerSystem DesignTests: Measures system design capabilities for real-time data processing and event-driven architectures.

  5. A user complains that their MLflow experiment tracking isn't logging parameters consistently for a distributed training job across multiple nodes. What are potential reasons for this and how would you advise them to ensure reliable logging?

    Software EngineerDebuggingTests: Evaluates understanding of distributed systems and common pitfalls with ML experiment tracking.

  6. Design a notification system for Databricks users that alerts them about job failures, resource warnings, or successful completion of critical pipelines. Consider different notification channels (email, Slack, etc.) and how users would configure these preferences.

    Software EngineerSystem DesignTests: Assesses system design skills for user-facing features and integration with external services.

72+ more Databricks-style questions are in the free library, each practiceable live with adaptive follow-ups and an honest scorecard. Start free.

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Databricks Interview Questions (2026) | ZorixOS