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Databricks Internship Interview Guide

Note: This is for the intern interview process.
Full-time roles have an additional system design interview round but the rest should be the same.

Interview Process Overview

1. Recruiter Phone Screen

This is a non-technical call with a recruiter. The goal here is to:

  • Walk through your resume
  • Explain your experiences in a clear, non-technical way
  • Show strong communication skills

Tip: Be able to describe your technical work so that a non-engineer can understand it.
Example: I explained my Amazon internship project in simple terms and the recruiter specifically told me she appreciated how clear it was.

2. Two Technical Rounds

After the recruiter screen, you’ll be scheduled for 2 technical interviews (3 for full time):

Leetcode-Style Interview

  • Standard Leetcode question
  • Clarify the problem
  • Talk through your approach
  • Write clean, correct code
  • Discuss time & space complexity

Implementation Interview

This round is less focused on algorithms and more about writing clean, readable, testable code.

Best practices: - Use clear and descriptive variable names - Write code like you're writing production code - Test your solution using print statements to validate output - Time complexity isn’t a huge concern — correctness and code quality matter more

3. Final Round — Behavioral Interview

This is with a hiring manager and focuses heavily on your resume and past experiences.

Expect: - Deep dive questions about your projects - Challenging follow-ups (e.g. design decisions you made) - Standard behavioral questions (conflict resolution, ownership, decision-making)

Example questions I was asked: - "Why did you choose DynamoDB over a relational database for your Amazon project?" - "Tell me about a time you had a conflict with your manager or mentor. How did you handle it?"

Offer Timeline

Databricks offers can take a while — don’t panic if you don’t hear back quickly.

  • For me: ~2 weeks after final round
  • Some people have waited even longer (like over a month)

This is because:

  • Interviewers write a feedback document
  • Hiring committee reviews and makes a decision
  • CEO approval is required for all offers

So the process takes time — be patient.

Final Tips

  • Be able to clearly explain your past work to non-technical audiences
  • Write clean, well-structured, and readable code
  • Don’t skip testing your code in the implementation round
  • Prepare for deep dive behavioral questions
  • Expect a slow offer timeline due to internal review processes

Good luck!