Patreon Data Engineer Interview Experience — Easy Phone Screen, HM Chat, Then I Dropped Before the Onsite

Posting my full Patreon loop from February, which I never wrote up. A former coworker referred me into the data team. There don't seem to be many Patreon interview write-ups, so I'm contributing one too.

Feb 27: 1st round

They gave me a big pile of JSON data that looked like users' personal data, with names, addresses, payment methods and so on, and asked me to do some basic data processing. At first I thought they wanted me to write SQL, but it turned out a simple Python for loop was all that was needed 😂

Then they asked very high-level, system-design-style questions: how would you build a data processing system, and how would you do it if the upstream data is batch vs. streaming. A very short, rough answer is enough.

Mar 6: HM chat

Chatting with the boss was very pleasant. The company is small, so the boss even knew my former coworker. It was mostly about the projects on my resume, extended into the usual behavioral questions.

After that they scheduled the next round, an onsite with three parts: Backend Onsite Coding, Data Eng System Design, and Core Values.

Because of my timeline I had already signed another offer, and I also felt I was interviewing for a data engineer team, so I dropped out.