Azure, Microsoft’s cloud computing platform, which offers a wide array of services, sync features, and monitoring tools, is establishing itself as a leader in the industry. Due to this, there is a huge demand among tech businesses for data engineers and experts with Azure certifications. Learning the Azure data engineer interview questions is the first step towards landing such a role and boosting your career.
Azure data engineers combine, transform, and consolidate data from numerous structured and unstructured data systems into formats that can be used to create analytics solutions. The data engineers hired by Azure are experts who are highly paid.
In the US, the average annual income for an Azure data engineer is $120,251. Most experienced data engineers can earn up to $143,216 per year, while entry-level occupations start at $116,342 annually.
To succeed in the Azure interview, you must fully grasp all the requirements to become an Azure data engineer. To kickstart your interview prep process, we have shortlisted the top Azure data engineer interview questions.
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In this article, we will discuss the Azure data engineer interview questions. These questions have been divided into three sections – basic, intermediate, and advanced. Reading these questions will prepare you for every kind of questions that the interviewer might ask you.
Also read:Â What Does a Data Engineer Do?
If you’re someone who’s just starting, here are some basic Azure data engineer interview questions:
You can answer this Azure data engineer interview question by stating that Azure is a cloud computing platform that offers hardware and software both. It provides a managed service that allows users to access the services that are in demand.
When it comes to data security, dynamic data masking has several vital roles and contains sensitive data to a certain specific set of users. Some of its features are:
You can answer this Azure data engineer interview question by stating that a polybase is used to optimize data ingestion into the PDW and support T-SQL. It lets developers transfer external data transparently from supported data stores, no matter the storage architecture of the external data store.
You can answer this Azure data engineer interview question by stating that Microsoft has included a reserved capacity option in Azure storage to optimize costs. The reserved storage gives its customers a fixed amount of capacity during the reservation period on the Azure cloud.
Azure Data Factory is a cloud-based integration service that lets users build data-driven workflows within the cloud to arrange and automate data movement and transformation. Using Azure Data Factory, you can:
Also read:Â Amazon Data Engineer Interview Questions
When applying for intermediate-level roles, these are the Azure data engineer interview questions you can expect:
You can answer this Azure data engineer interview question by stating that it is a service that lets users store massive amounts of unstructured object data such as binary data or text. It can even be used to publicly showcase data or privately store the application data. Blog storage is commonly used for:
You can answer this Azure data engineer interview question by stating the following steps. These are involved in creating the ETL process in Azure Data Factory are:
You can answer this Azure data engineer interview question by stating that the program code is typically present either on the client-side or the server. However, serverless computing accompanies the stateless code nature, which means the code doesn’t need any infrastructure.
Users have to pay to access the compute resources the code uses within the brief period in which the code is being executed. It’s cost-effective, and users need to pay only for the resources they have used.
Also read: The Ultimate Data Engineer Interview Guide
The top-level concepts of Azure Data Factory are as follows:
It is used as a carrier for the numerous processes taking place. Every individual process is known as an activity.
Activities stand for the process steps involved in a pipeline. A pipeline has one or multiple activities and can be anything. This means querying a data set or transferring the dataset from one source to the other.
Simply put, it’s a structure that holds the data.
Used for storing critical information when connecting an external source.
Also read:Â Facebook Data Engineer Interview Questions
You need to prepare these Azure data engineer interview questions for experienced professionals when applying for more advanced positions:
You can answer this Azure data engineer interview question by stating that to schedule a pipeline, you could take the help of the scheduler trigger or the time window trigger. This trigger uses the wall-clock calendar schedule and can plan pipelines at periodic intervals or calendar-based recurring patterns.
You can answer this Azure data engineer interview question by stating that to distribute the data uniformly across multiple partitions, selecting a good partition key is pretty important. A Synthetic partition key can be developed when there isn’t any right column with properly distributed values.
Here are the three ways in which a synthetic partition key can be created:
Also read:Â How to Prepare for Data Engineer Interviews
You can answer this Azure data engineer interview question by stating that using the Data Factory V2 version is recommended when creating data flows.
In Data Factory, parameters are a top-tier concept. You should further state in this Azure data engineer interview question that they can be defined at the pipeline level, followed by the passing of arguments to execute the pipeline run on-demand or upon using a trigger.
These are some important Azure data engineer interview questions that will give you an idea of what to expect in the interview. Also, ensure that you prepare these topics — Security, DevOps, CI/CD, Infrastructure as a Code best practices, Subscription, Billing Management, etc.
As you prepare for your DE interview, it would be best to study Azure using a holistic approach that extends beyond the fundamentals of the role. Don’t forget to prep your resume as well with the help of the Data Engineer Resume Guide.
Also read:Â 15 Skills to Ace Data Engineering Interviews
If you need help with your prep, join Interview Kickstart’s Data Engineering Interview Course — the first-of-its-kind, domain-specific tech interview prep program designed and taught by FAANG+ instructors.
IK is the gold standard in tech interview prep. Our programs include a comprehensive curriculum, unmatched teaching methods, FAANG+ instructors, and career coaching to help you nail your next tech interview.
Q1. What Does An Azure Data Engineer Do?
Azure data engineers are responsible for the integration, transformation, operation, and consolidation of data from structured or unstructured data systems.
Q2. What Skills are Needed to Become an Azure Data Engineer?
As an Azure data engineer, you’ll need to have skills such as Database system management (SQL or Non-SQL), Data warehousing, ETL (Extract, Transform and Load) tools, Machine Learning, knowledge of programming language basics (Python/Java), and so on.
Q3. How to Prepare for the Azure Data Engineer Interview?
Get a good understanding of Azure’s Modern Enterprise Data and Analytics Platform and build your knowledge across its other specialties. Further, you should also be able to communicate the business value of the Azure Data Platform.
Q4. What are the Important Azure Data Engineer Interview Questions?
Some important Azure data engineer interview questions are as follows:
Q5. Are Azure Data Engineers in demand?
The answer is yes. As per Enlyft, almost 567,824 businesses are using the Azure platform worldwide. This implies that the business and its needs are growing. So, it’s safe to say that Microsoft Azure data engineers are highly in demand.
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