How do I screen Data Engineer candidates before interviewing?

Send every applicant one link that carries 4 skills tests (Data Extraction, Transformation and Loading, Data Modeling Concepts, Apache Spark, PostgreSQL), a personality inventory and 5 one-way video questions. springhire scores everything automatically and ranks the candidates, so you interview the top few. The free plan covers 10 candidates a month.

How long does the Data Engineer screening take a candidate?

About 40 minutes for the tests, plus 10 to 15 minutes for the video questions. Candidates complete it on their own time, on any device.

What should a Data Engineer job description include?

A short brief, key responsibilities, must-have and nice-to-have skills and the requirements. The JD generator writes one for this role in a minute.

Which interview questions work best for a Data Engineer?

Questions that ask for a specific past example and a walkthrough of how the candidate thinks. This page lists 8 with sample answers, and the full bank has more.

Yes. The free plan includes every screening tool with 10 candidate credits a month and no card. Paid plans start at $39 a month.

Data & AI

How to hire a Data Engineer

What the role does, the job description, the interview questions, and the 40-minute screening pack that tells you who can do the job before you book a single interview.

Screen Data Engineer candidates free See the pack

The role

What a Data Engineer does

A Data Engineer sits in the Data & AI function. The sections below give you the job description, the interview questions and the screening pack for the role.

Screen before you interview

The Data Engineer screening pack

ETL, modelling, distributed processing and SQL are the core of the job. Every applicant gets one link. You get one ranked report.

Skills tests · 40 minutes total

Data & analyticsData Extraction, Transformation and Loading Test10 min · 20 questions · IntermediateThe Data Extraction, Transformation and Loading Test helps hiring teams assess intermediate ETL skills before interviews. It is suited to candidates who build, maintain or troubleshoot data workflows and need to reason about pipeline design, transformations and reliability.Data & analyticsData Modeling Concepts Test10 min · 20 questions · IntermediateThe Data Modeling Concepts Test helps hiring teams assess whether candidates can structure data clearly and avoid common design problems. It is suited to intermediate candidates in data and analytics roles who need practical knowledge of normalisation, dimensional modelling, and table relationships.Programming knowledgeApache Spark Test10 min · 20 questions · IntermediateThe Apache Spark Test helps hiring teams assess intermediate Spark knowledge before interviews. It is suited to roles that build, run or tune Spark pipelines, and checks whether candidates understand how Spark executes work, applies transformations and improves performance.Software skillsPostgreSQL Test10 min · 20 questions · IntermediateThe PostgreSQL Test is an intermediate screening assessment for hiring teams evaluating candidates who work with relational data. In 10 minutes, it checks practical knowledge of queries and joins, indexes, and constraints, helping you spot people who can reason through common database tasks.

Personality inventory

Big 5 (OCEAN) Personality TestThe Big 5 (OCEAN) Personality Test helps hiring teams understand how entry level candidates are likely to approach work, people and pressure. It measures five broad personality dimensions that can support decisions for roles where reliability, teamwork, adaptability and communication matter.

One-way video questions · answered on camera, scored by AI

1
Describe a pipeline you built end to end. Where did it break first?
2
How do you design a schema for analytics versus for an application?
3
How do you handle late-arriving or duplicate data?
4
What do you monitor in production, and what wakes you up at night?
5
Batch or streaming for our use case? Argue it.

Send this pack to your applicantsFree plan, 10 candidates a month, no card.

Interview questions

Data Engineer interview questions

For the candidates who pass the pack. Each comes with a sample answer on the full page.

Ask these after the screening pack, not instead of it. A candidate who has already scored on Data Extraction, Transformation and Loading, Data Modeling Concepts, Apache Spark, PostgreSQL has shown they can do the work, which frees the interview to do what a test cannot: find out how they think, how they explain themselves, and how they behave when something goes wrong.

Ask every Data Engineer candidate the same questions in the same order. Comparable answers are the whole point; a different conversation with each person tells you who you liked, not who was strongest.
Look for a specific example with a result, not a description of how the candidate would approach it in principle. Follow up once with “what happened next?” and stop talking.
Score each answer before moving to the next question, and write down what was said rather than the impression it left.
At volume, record the first 4 of these instead of calling. Candidates answer on their own time, the answers are transcribed and scored, and you keep live interviews for the shortlist.

The pack takes a candidate about 40 minutes, so a Data Engineer applicant arrives at this interview already measured on the parts you can measure without a meeting.