Amazon Data Engineer Interview Questions & Practice

Amazon Data Engineer interviews lean heavily on SQL (window functions, aggregations, dedup), data modeling, and pipeline design with AWS services like Glue, Redshift and EMR. Practice the question styles below — each is auto-graded with instant feedback — then check the live Amazon Data Engineering openings.

Practice challenges

• Word Frequency Counter (python, easy, +50 XP)
• Find Duplicate Emails (sql, easy, +50 XP)
• Second Highest Salary (sql, easy, +50 XP)
• Latest Order Per Customer (sql, easy, +50 XP)
• 3-Day Rolling Sum of Sales (sql, easy, +100 XP)
• 30-Day Rolling Sales Amount (sql, easy, +100 XP)
• 7-Day Rolling Average Sales (sql, easy, +100 XP)
• Customers With at Least One Order (sql, easy, +50 XP)
• Count Orders Per Customer Including Zero (sql, easy, +50 XP)
• Total Amount Spent Per Customer (With Zero) (sql, easy, +50 XP)
• E-commerce: Customers Who Placed an Order (IN Subquery) (sql, easy, +50 XP)
• E-commerce: Count Orders Per Customer (sql, easy, +50 XP)
• ROW_NUMBER: Assign Unique Rank to Each Employee (sql, easy, +50 XP)
• ROW_NUMBER: Find the Highest-Paid Employee in Each Department (sql, easy, +50 XP)
• RANK: Rank Employees by Salary (With Gaps) (sql, easy, +50 XP)
• DENSE_RANK: Rank Employees Without Gaps (sql, easy, +50 XP)
• RANK vs DENSE_RANK: See the Difference Side by Side (sql, easy, +50 XP)
• SUM OVER: Calculate Running Total of Daily Sales (sql, easy, +50 XP)
• SUM OVER: Show Grand Total on Every Row (sql, easy, +50 XP)
• SUM OVER PARTITION BY: Running Total Per Department (sql, easy, +50 XP)

Live Amazon Data Engineering jobs

• Data Engineer II, Prime Video Advertising — Seattle, Washington, USA
• Data Engineer II, GTPC Tech, Compliance & Assurance, AWS Security — New York, New York, USA
• Member of Technical Staff - Data Platform Engineer, Frontier AI Robotics — San Francisco, California, USA
• Data Engineer, Workforce Solutions - Talent Mobility — Bellevue, Washington, USA
• Software Development Engineer, Data Platform, Prime Video Personalization & Discovery — New York, New York, USA
• Data Engineer II, AWS Sustainability Technology — Seattle, Washington, USA

What is asked in an Amazon Data Engineer interview?

Typically 2-3 SQL rounds (window functions, joins, aggregation edge cases), a data-modeling discussion, pipeline design with AWS services (Glue, EMR, Redshift, Kinesis), and Leadership Principles behavioral questions.

How much SQL do I need for Amazon DE roles?

A lot — expect to write ROW_NUMBER/RANK dedup queries, rolling aggregations, and multi-join queries by hand. The SQL challenges on this page mirror that difficulty.

Does Amazon ask PySpark in Data Engineer interviews?

Often yes for L5+, especially DataFrame transformations, joins vs broadcast joins, and partitioning trade-offs. Practice the PySpark set below in a real Spark session.

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