Yelp Data Scientist Interview Questions
& Process
Real candidates share what happened, how many rounds they had,
and how the experience turned out.
Based on 40 interview experiences · FREE TO READ
Candidate interview experiences
First-hand accounts from people who interviewed at Yelp.
Yelp
Senior Data Scientist
Senior Average Neutral experience No offer 7 rounds
Interview process
Technical screen Phone screen Presentation Technical screen Background check Offer
Interview formats
Coding Technical Presentation Behavioral
The hiring process kicks off with a technical take-home assessment on Hackerrank, featuring SQL and Python questions. This is followed by a technical interview lasting about an hour. If things go well, there's a (digital) on-site round which includes five 45-minute interviews. These cover a project presentation, and then a mix of technical, situational, and motivational questions. Interestingly, after the take-home, I was told no Data Scientist was free for a whole month to do the 1-hour interview, which was a bit odd. But, everyone was professional and prepared. After the lengthy on-site interviews, the outcome was a rejection, with no specific feedback given, just that the available positions were filled.
Confirmed questions4 questions
- Can you explain Python concepts like map, reduce, functions, and classes?
- How would you approach SQL operations including join, sorting, and grouping?
- Please describe and present one of your projects to the panel.
Yelp
Data Scientist
Entry Average Negative experience No offer 2 rounds
Interview process
Recruiter call Technical screen
Interview formats
Technical Coding
Applied and heard back from a recruiter in a few days for a 30 min online screening. The recruiter seemed nice but not super interested in me. Then, I got invited to a 1-hour online technical interview with a senior data scientist in the US. We used a shared text editor for technical questions on Python/Pandas, stats, and SQL. We had connection issues, which made it tough to focus, and the interviewer didn't address it much. The questions weren't too hard, but the connection problems were distracting. A few days later, I got a rejection email with no explanation or feedback offered, which was disappointing given the time invested.
Confirmed questions1 question
- Could you write Python code to calculate the standard deviation for a list of numbers?
Yelp
Data Scientist
Entry Average Positive experience No offer 1 round
Interview process
Recruiter call Phone screen Technical screen
Interview formats
Technical Coding
So I applied and after my resume got noticed, a recruiter reached out to set up a technical phone screen. It was a Skype video call with a data scientist who's part of the analytics team. We talked a bit about my background, and then he hit me with a machine learning modeling problem that was pretty open-ended. We discussed potential features and model choices. After that, we moved to coder pad and he gave me a probability question that I had to solve using Monte Carlo simulation in Python. I didn't quite finish it because time ran out. The conversation felt good though. A couple days later, the recruiter let me know they were moving forward with other candidates who were a bit stronger.
Confirmed questions1 question
- For predicting the number of likes on a review, what features would you consider including?
Yelp Data Scientist Interview Questions
Quoted word for word from Yelp interview reports.
“Is it possible for a word to have a palindrome anagram?”
Read reports →“Can you identify which strings in a given set are anagrams of each other?”
Read reports →“Could you write Python code to calculate the standard deviation for a list of numbers?”
Read reports →“What are the mathematical differences between decision trees and extreme boosted trees?”
Read reports →“Explain if a left join can produce the same output as an inner join, and the conditions under which this might happen.”
Read report →“What is a union, and how does it differ from a join?”
Read report →“If a coin lands on heads 55 times out of 100 tosses, how would you assess if the coin is fair?”
Read report →“For joining tables and using group by, what would be the SQL query?”
Read report →“For predicting the number of likes on a review, what features would you consider including?”
Read report →Formats, difficulty and experience
Across all 40 Yelp interview reports.