You have 3 hours, a raw dataset, and a vague business goal: build and present an ML solution.
C3.ai's reported 3-hour data science case, the round their candidates rate hardest. The winners aren't the best modelers; they're the ones who budget the clock, ship a baseline in hour one, and present like a consultant.
Updated Aug 2026 · Grounded in real Forward Deployed Engineer interview loops and written to a senior-engineer editorial bar.
C3.ai's reported 3-hour data science case, the round their candidates rate hardest. The winners aren't the best modelers; they're the ones who budget the clock, ship a baseline in hour one, and present like a consultant.
Lead with where the obvious approach breaks, because that is the judgment they are screening for — most candidates jump straight to the happy path and lose the room.
Then walk the failure back through the pipeline in order, naming the one metric the customer's exec sponsor actually cares about before you propose the fix.
