Ho presentato la mia candidatura tramite un selezionatore. La procedura ha richiesto 2 mesi. Ho sostenuto un colloquio presso Booking.com (Bengaluru) nel mese di mar 2023
Colloquio
I got call through LinkedIn in Feb,2023 for data engineer in Booking.com, Bangalore. It started with an online coding round which had a sql question and a map-reduce related spark question. After clearing that I got call for offline interview in the Bangalore office, where there were 2 rounds. 1st was system level design along with a bit of coding and second round was more of a fitment round. The overall discussion was good. I really enjoyed the process and the interviewers were very accurately explaining what and how they want you to answer.
Domande di colloquio [1]
Domanda 1
SQL question, spark basics, system level design of big data systems
Ho presentato la mia candidatura online. La procedura ha richiesto 4 settimane. Ho sostenuto un colloquio presso Booking.com (Amsterdam) nel mese di ott 2025
Colloquio
Interview process (Mid Data Engineer — Marketing):
• Take-home (HackerRank): 1-hour Python + SQL (offline).
• Recruiter screen.
• Live coding (Python): standard DS/algos + a bit of SQL.
• System design (data): Hackerrank whiteboard
• Engineering Manager: last step.
My experience:
• Rejected at system design with feedback that felt nitpicky for mid-level.
• Panelists couldn’t say which team I’d join; ~5 min left for my questions.
• After a month, I still didn’t know the actual responsibilities or team setup, although they did say I’d probably end up just writing spark jobs.
• Feedback centered on tool choices (e.g., Flink vs Spark despite the prompt asking for low latency; Redis vs Cassandra when budget “wasn’t important”; dislike of Kafka Streams). It came across as grading stack alignment rather than the reasoning and trade-offs.
• For a mid role, details like exact stack are usually team decisions, not pass/fail items.
• Communication was rough: interviewers often mumbled or poorly formulated questions, then marked me for not replying fast enough or for asking them to repeat/rephrase, even when I answered correctly once the question was clear.
• Contradictory design feedback: when I added concrete details, they called it “too complex”; when kept simpler, it felt like they’d say “not experienced enough” expectations were unclear for a mid role.
Takeaway: Felt like “pick our exact stack or you’re out.” Given the time investment, unclear team/charter, and inconsistent questioning, I wouldn’t go through it again.
Domande di colloquio [1]
Domanda 1
Coding challenge: complete a class with some methods and use map reduce later
System design: online/offline feature store
Ho presentato la mia candidatura online. La procedura ha richiesto 3 mesi. Ho sostenuto un colloquio presso Booking.com nel mese di set 2023
Colloquio
Had 4 stages,
1 hackerank test
2nd interview with recruiter (I got ghosted for about 5 weeks from application).
3rd stage Interview with another recruiter. After which I got sent some study topics for the next interview. The interview was related to mostly streaming and a few algorithm topics.
4th stage Hackerank live code test with 2 interviewers.
Domande di colloquio [1]
Domanda 1
Coding Interview There were 3 questions, and the first 2 questions was something similar to the hackerank test. It had to to do with aggregating streams. The second question was related to topological sorting. Ordering tasks based on dependencies. Something similar to what you'll have in a dag.