12You're handed raw JSON events in a Snowflake VARIANT column. How do you query and model them?▼mediumSnowflakeDatabricksPalantir1 replies○ sign inSnowflake's signature semi-structured question. Dot-notation, LATERAL FLATTEN for nested arrays, the casting traps, and the schema-on-read vs flattened-model judgment call interviewers really want to hear.Open full answer →
14Explain Snowflake micro-partitions and clustering, and when a bigger warehouse will NOT make a query faster.▼hardSnowflakeMicrosoftPalantir1 replies○ sign inSnowflake's signature internals question, and the trap is in the second half: most candidates can define micro-partitions, but the scoring is on knowing the four cases where scaling up burns credits for zero speedup.Open full answer →
16How do you size Snowflake warehouses, when do you scale up vs scale out, and how do you keep the bill sane?▼mediumSnowflakeMicrosoftRetool1 replies○ sign inThe question that simulates the actual FDE job: a customer's Snowflake bill just doubled. Scale-up vs scale-out is the easy half, the scoring is on workload isolation, auto-suspend, and proving which knob to turn.Open full answer →
34Write SQL for click-through rate by ad in October, then monthly average star ratings per Marketplace product.▼easySnowflake1 replies◆ premiumThe two reported Snowflake SQL-screen warmups. Both look trivial; both have a silent-failure trap, integer division and divide-by-zero in one, the EXTRACT(MONTH) year-collision in the other.Open full answer →
