I applied online. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Wells Fargo (Bengaluru) in Sep 2024
Interview
The interview process for a Data Engineer position at Wells Fargo typically begins with an initial HR/recruiter screening to assess your background and experience. This is followed by one or more technical interviews, where you’ll face questions on SQL, Python, ETL processes, cloud platforms (like AWS or Azure), and data modeling. You may also be asked to solve coding problems and demonstrate knowledge of big data technologies such as Hadoop or Spark
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Can you walk us through the process of designing an end-to-end data pipeline, including data ingestion, transformation, and loading (ETL), and how you would ensure its scalability and reliability?
Different rounds of interviews:
In the very first round, two interviewers joined both from a similar dominant cultural background we see in tech today (Indians). They joined late, and one of them left in the middle of the interview without any explanation. The initial questions were fairly basic and focused mainly on my background and experience.
Later, they introduced a problem they were currently struggling with and asked me to solve it within a very limited amount of time. I started by breaking down the problem step by step, clarifying assumptions, and outlining my approach. However, I was repeatedly interrupted, with the interviewers moving quickly to their own proposed solutions for different parts of the problem.
I attempted to revisit the underlying assumptions and reasoning, since those details were important and could significantly impact the final solution. However, the conversation continued moving forward without allowing enough time to fully explore the problem or explain my thought process. This pattern continued throughout the remainder of the interview.
My takeaway:
I felt that I was not given sufficient opportunity to demonstrate my problem-solving approach, technical reasoning, and decision-making process. The interview felt more like an exercise of matching my response against a predefined solution rather than an evaluation of how candidates approach ambiguous problems and develop solutions.
I also felt that the interview dynamic was affected by existing familiarity between the interviewers, which made it more challenging to have a fully open, balanced, and independent evaluation.
I applied online. I interviewed at Wells Fargo (Des Moines, IA)
Interview
There were two rounds on interviews
First Round: Mix of behavioral and technical
Second: Technical with resume questions as well
Overall structured process.
Questions on SQL quires and ETL processes.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Describe an ETL pipeline and give tech stack examples used
mostly the questions were on sorting algorithms and searching algorithms, easy level and also on OS and SQL, also asked questions related to my future plans.overall the interview level was easy