Interview preparation
Delta Lake interview questions for Data Engineers
Every question starts with a direct answer you could say out loud, then explains why, when and what goes wrong. Tick questions off as you practise.
All Delta Lake questions
| # | Question | Difficulty | Type | Done |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | What is Delta Lake time travel good for, and what are its limits? | Easy | conceptual, scenario | |
| 2 | What problems does Delta Lake solve? | Easy | conceptual | |
| 3 | Delta Lake vs Apache Iceberg vs Apache Hudi: how do they differ? | Medium | conceptual, architecture | |
| 4 | How does Delta Lake MERGE work, and why do concurrent MERGEs fail? | Medium | conceptual, debugging | |
| 5 | How is a Parquet file organised, and how does that speed up queries? | Medium | conceptual, optimization | |
| 6 | OPTIMIZE, Z-ORDER or liquid clustering: which would you use on a Delta table? | Medium | conceptual, optimization, scenario | |
| 7 | What does VACUUM do in Delta Lake, and what can go wrong? | Medium | conceptual, scenario | |
| 8 | What is schema evolution and when is it safe? | Medium | conceptual, scenario |
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Concept review
- LessonIntermediateData Lakes, Lakehouse Architecture and Delta Lake
- LessonIntermediateDelta Lake vs Traditional Data Lake Tables
- LessonBeginnerJSON vs Parquet for Analytics Pipelines
- LessonIntermediateDelta Lake MERGE, Change Data Feed and Streaming
- LessonAdvancedDelta Lake Performance: OPTIMIZE, Z-Ordering, VACUUM and Liquid Clustering
- LessonIntermediateParquet vs Avro vs ORC for Data Engineering
- LessonAdvancedSchema Evolution: Safe Design Patterns
- LessonIntermediateDelta Lake: Transactions, Schema Evolution and Time Travel