PayPal Data Scientist Interview Questions
& Process
Real candidates share what happened, how many rounds they had,
and how the experience turned out.
Based on 98 interview experiences · FREE TO READ
Candidate interview experiences
First-hand accounts from people who interviewed at PayPal.
PayPal
Data Scientist
Senior Average Positive experience Accept offer 4 rounds
Interview process
Recruiter call Technical screen Technical screen Technical screen Technical screen
Interview formats
Technical Coding Case Behavioral
It started with a recruiter screening, then there were 4 rounds. R1 was SQL and Python questions (easy/medium) and DS/ML theory. R2 was a mini case about risk, plus SQL and Python questions (easy/medium). R3 was another mini case about risk, and questions about my past experience. R4 was about business strategy for risk and past experience questions.
Confirmed questions5 questions
- Can you explain SQL window functions and grouping?
- How would you find all pairs in Python with a sum equal to x?
- Regarding a case on credit policy, what is the root cause of the origination bottleneck?
PayPal
Data Science Manager
Manager Average Neutral experience No offer 4 rounds
Interview process
Recruiter call Technical screen Onsite Background check Offer
Interview formats
Behavioral Technical Presentation
I went through all the rounds for a Data Science Manager role at PayPal Dublin. The first recruiter call was nice, but afterwards, all contact went to email and they were super unresponsive. Even though I passed all the rounds, I never heard back. I sent several polite emails over weeks, but the recruiter ghosted me. No updates, no feedback, nothing. It felt like they just left me hanging after I put in a lot of time and effort. For a company like PayPal, this is really disappointing and unprofessional. At the very least, they should respect candidates' time and give updates, even if it's a rejection. Ghosting after final rounds is not okay and shows a bad company culture and hiring process.
Confirmed questions1 question
- Can you describe how you would go about designing a fraud detection model for PayPal transactions?
PayPal
Data Scientist
Entry Easy Negative experience No offer 5 rounds
Interview process
Recruiter call Take home Technical screen Onsite Presentation Background check Offer
Interview formats
Technical Coding Case Presentation Behavioral
So I started with a recruiter screening call. Then there was a home assignment, a binary classification task that was pretty straightforward. After that, I had an on-site interview where we talked about my previous projects and went over the home assignment. This was followed by a case study interview and then a final interview with a senior manager. I waited for weeks with no news, even after I followed up via email. Eventually, I got a rejection email with a generic reason and no useful feedback, and no phone call. For a company like PayPal, this felt pretty disrespectful considering the time and effort candidates put in, especially since they didn't reimburse travel costs for the on-site. My main issue, though, was the unprofessionalism of some interviewers. During my virtual case study interview, both interviewers seemed pretty checked out. One guy in particular was super disinterested and rude from the beginning. He was in shorts, had his feet up on the table, and was leaning back the whole time, making it hard to tell if he was even paying attention. It was a really weird and uncomfortable experience because of his unprofessional behavior.
Confirmed questions0 questions
No confirmed questions were included in this interview report.
PayPal Data Scientist Interview Questions
Quoted word for word from PayPal interview reports.
“what is the probability of seeing a shooting star in 1 hour?”
Read reports →“How would you find all pairs in Python with a sum equal to x?”
Read reports →“Given a friend has two children, and you know at least one is a boy, what's the probability the other child is also a boy?”
Read reports →“What problems arise with k-nearest neighbour when k is too high or too low?”
Read reports →“If you flip a coin 10 times, what are the chances they all land on heads?”
Read report →“From a mathematical perspective, what impact does altering the number of features used per tree have on the performance of a random forest model?”
Read report →“Between sampling a number from 1 to n uniformly and squaring it, versus sampling two numbers and multiplying them, which has the larger expected value?”
Read report →“Regarding regression algorithms, what is the purpose of regularisation and what impact does it have on the model?”
Read report →“Create groups for each country: if the number of daily transactors is within 5% (up or down) of the previous day's transactors, they belong to the same group; otherwise, start a new group. Use integers for group identifiers.”
Read report →Formats, difficulty and experience
Across all 98 PayPal interview reports.