Databricks Customer Success Engineer Interview Questions
& Process

I went through 4 rounds over about 1.5 months. Round 1: Hiring manager screening - General details about the role, checking if you are a fit for the role and if the role interests you, behavioral questions, and questions about your customer success background. Round 2: Take home assessment to judge your analytics skills (I used SQL as I am comfortable with SQL) to see how you would work on different datasets and to test your basic data science background on the Databricks community edition. There was no strict deadline, they were flexible, but I would recommend doing it in one sitting. The questions are not very difficult. When I was given the assessment, I also spoke to the recruiter about salary expectations, visa requirements etc. Round 3: Technical interview with a Customer Success Team member. This round was where I didn’t do well as you are expected to know Spark very well and have experience working on the cloud. Round 4: Cultural fit interview with the Sales Director. This was a behavioral round and more of a cultural fit check to see if you’d fit into the team. I did not make it beyond round 4 into the presentation round which was the final round because they needed someone with more technical skills.

First there was an HR screening call. They asked basic details about my experience, explained the role, and discussed expected compensation. It was a 15 min call, after which the recruiter moved me to the Hiring Manager round. Hiring Manager: It was a good discussion about my current experience and what I expect from the prospective job. The round went very well, and I was told the recruiter would reach out to me for the next step, which was a hands-on assessment based on Spark. Weeks went by, I reached out to the recruiter and they said the further process would take place after the holiday season (the process had started a week before Christmas). In January, I reached out again. This time I got an automated response saying they would not be moving forward with my application. I was expecting a bit more transparency from a company like Databricks.

Recruiter saw my profile and messaged me on LinkedIn to ask if I’d be interested. I didn’t really think my profile matched some of the technical requirements but decided to talk with him anyway. I chose to go for the role and move forward in the process. I spoke with the hiring manager who asked some basic questions about big data and my BI experience. I got a take home coding assessment, which was medium difficulty, and I passed it. Then recruiting did a good job coordinating and scheduling the next 5 interviews (a technical interview, a cultural fit one, a sales-ish component and then two interviews with SVP’s). HR handled all of this really quickly. I was given and accepted a verbal offer. But after a few days with no news and no contract, the SVP reached out and told me I was rejected and the offer was taken back because upper management thought I was a ‘job hopper’ and were worried I’d leave after IPO. They saw my lack of long tenure, even after I went through all their hoops, as a red flag. I was crushed by the whole thing and now avoid companies that have 5 or more interviews in their process.