Zillow Data Scientist Interview Questions
& Process
Real candidates share what happened, how many rounds they had,
and how the experience turned out.
Based on 53 interview experiences · FREE TO READ
Candidate interview experiences
First-hand accounts from people who interviewed at Zillow.
Zillow
Data Scientist
Senior Difficult Negative experience No offer 3 rounds
Interview process
Recruiter call Technical screen Panel
Interview formats
Technical Coding Other
Had a half-hour call with the recruiter that went really well. The second round was a technical screening, and the third/final round involved panel interviews. I interviewed back in March 2023. They mentioned the job had been open since November 2022. The 45-minute technical screening was pretty tough for this stage, featuring a big, multi-part SQL exercise (covering various joins, window functions, and CASE/WHEN statements) and a Python exercise (assuming knowledge of the math behind a classification algorithm), followed by a conceptual question about the Python part. I aced the technical exercise, getting everything right, but wasn't moved forward. No specific feedback was given, leading me to believe they didn't like my approach to the exercise, even though it was correct – perhaps not the most optimal solution. The role still seems unfilled, as I saw it reposted today, suggesting a mismatch between team needs, recruiter communication, and screener evaluation. It feels like they're seeking a rare candidate with a broad, advanced skillset for a salary that doesn't match. This role has been open for a long time.
Confirmed questions2 questions
- SQL/Python exercises
- Data-preprocessing question
Zillow
Data Scientist
Mid Average Negative experience No offer 2 rounds
Interview process
Recruiter call Technical screen
Interview formats
Technical Coding
The interview process started with a recruiter screener, followed by a technical screener. After that, there were supposed to be 4 panel interviews, but I was cut after the technical screener. Overall, it was a pretty bad experience, like a 2/5, maybe the worst I've had, but the company seems cool, so I guess you gotta deal with it. During the recruiter call, they said the first round would be SQL, and when I asked about the SQL version, they said to use whatever I'm comfortable with. So I used SAS SQL functions, which is what I normally use. The technical interviewer hadn't seen these functions before and didn't know them (like Outer Union Corr, 'ne', where <> functions includes nulls, etc.). There were also times the interviewer thought the function didn't work when their edge case wasn't applicable or was already handled. This stuff happens, but combined, it made it awkward. BUT, honestly, I was still not as good at SQL as the interviewer, and even if they knew the SAS SQL functions, I would have failed anyway. I made a lot of dumb mistakes looking back, so not making it to the next round is my fault. The technical screener wasn't the main reason this was awful. At the end, the interviewer didn't tell me the next steps or when to expect a response (probably because they knew I'd be cut). I emailed the recruiter the next day asking about a timeline, and they ignored me. I followed up again two days later, still asking about a timeline, and they ignored me again until three days later. So, with the recruiter ghosting me for a while and being told I could code however I wanted when I couldn't, the whole thing was a 2/5, really bad.
Confirmed questions5 questions
- Write a query to combine two datasets, excluding customers present in both.
- Can this query be written in an alternative way?
- Using two tables, one with UserID and State, and another with UserID, saved home, and date of saving home, create a query to calculate the percentage of users in each state who have saved a home.
Zillow
Data Scientist
Entry Average Positive experience No offer 2 rounds
Interview process
Recruiter call Take home
Interview formats
Behavioral Technical
The first step was a phone interview with a recruiter for the data scientist role. I started by introducing my past data analysis experience from graduate school, detailing several projects and a Kaggle competition. During my explanation, the recruiter asked me basic questions about machine learning algorithms like SVM, ensemble methods, and regression. The interview concluded with an offline assignment requiring me to design a data analysis algorithm.
Confirmed questions1 question
- Could you explain the rationale behind SVM's maximization of the margin between support vectors?
Zillow Data Scientist Interview Questions
Quoted word for word from Zillow interview reports.
“Given the coordinates of two rectangles, please write an R function to determine if they overlap.”
Read reports →“What are the differences between L1 and L2 regularization?”
Read reports →“Describe a modeling technique for using nearby house prices to fill in missing price data.”
Read reports →“Could you explain the rationale behind SVM's maximization of the margin between support vectors?”
Read reports →“Can you explain the differences and similarities between Vision transformers and CNNs?”
Read report →“Given two tables, one with UserID and open Date, and another with User ID, saved home, and date of saving home, write a function to find the average time between account creation and saving a home.”
Read report →“What's an effective way to find missing numbers in a big dataset?”
Read report →“How would the approach to predicting sale prices differ between rural and urban areas? (Hint: check Zillow's blogs)”
Read report →“Can you explain why pooling layers are necessary and describe CNNs?”
Read report →Formats, difficulty and experience
Across all 53 Zillow interview reports.