Sam's Club Data Scientist Interview Questions
& Process

There were 2 interview rounds. The first was a 45-minute coding interview that covered arrays. The second was a 45-minute discussion about work experience related to machine learning, with a preference for Azure deployment and a high priority for those with research backgrounds or PhDs.

I got an online assessment that lasted two hours. It was supposed to be recorded, but I didn't know that at the time. They used HackerEarth for it. It had nine questions on probability and linear algebra, plus two coding questions. The math questions were pretty straightforward, especially if you remember to use logarithms for large factorials, which they expect you to do in Python. The tricky part for me was the coding questions and how the test platform handled output. HackerEarth has two modes: testing with your own input or submitting for their tests. When testing, it's supposed to show your output against the expected output. The second coding problem was simple, but the custom input test kept giving me errors even when I was sure my answer was right. The platform is super sensitive to output formatting; even an extra space can make your answer incorrect. This might be a bug or a browser issue, as I didn't have problems with the first coding question. The coding questions were worth half the total points. I failed the test because it didn't accept my solution, and I still don't know exactly why. The test itself wasn't hard, but it was frustrating to deal with.

I applied at the university's career fair and then got notified about an interview. It felt like a mix of an HR phone screen and a technical screen. I had a Zoom meeting with 4 technicians from the Data Science team. Each of them asked about different parts of my resume and the technologies I've used.