Spotify data scientist interview

Last updated: Nov. 9, 2023
3 mins read
Leon Wei
Leon

Here is a Spotify data scientist interview case study.

If you are preparing for a data scientist job interview and want to practice mock interviews with FAANG hiring managers, feel free to use our coaching service.

If you have questions, or want to share your answers, discuss in our forum.


Spotify Data Scientist interview summary

How it gets started: H.R. reached out on LinkedIn.

Job Level: Junior 

Year of Experience: 1 -2 years

Degree: M.S. in Statistics

Offer: Yes

T.C.: ~200K USD

Location: New York City

Interview process: 5 weeks

Team: Personalization

Preparation: 2 months

Has a job: yes


Spotify Data Scientist interview round 1: recruiter call

Resume deep dive, favorite project, who are the stakeholders, and the most challenging part of the current job: whether it's more on the technical side or communication/sharing insights with stakeholders.


Spotify Data Scientist interview round 2: hiring manager informational call

Introduction of the team, making sure it will be a good fit based on the background.


Spotify Data Scientist interview round 3: technical screening

  • Python or R: (20 minutes)

Given a data file, import it into the console, and create a new column derived from certain conditions from another column.

Follow up: write a function that you can call to replicate what you just did.

Run the code and make sure the results match.

  •  SQL

2 tables:  

ab_testing

user_id | testing_bucket (treatment/control)

streaming

user_id | date | duration

  1. Open question: with the above date, what kind of analysis do you want to do?
  2. Write a query to compare the average streaming time between the two testing groups.
  3. What kind of statistical test (two-sample t-test) would you perform, and how would you explain the results to business stakeholders (non-technical)?
  • Product sense

If a subgroup's streaming time increased significantly while another subgroup decreased, how would you analyze this, and how do you explain this to a business leader?

If we can't do ab testing, how do we know if a certain product feature is going to be useful and if we can quantify its impact?


Spotify Data Scientist interview Round 4: Takehome date challenge: 

Given a set of popular editorial (manually curated by the music editorial team, not algorithmically generated) playlists and their followers' streaming data.

What kind of insights have you found? Anything we can do to improve the playlist or help the music editorial team?


Spotify Data Scientist interview final round: virtual onsite

  1. Director: mostly behavioral questions
  2. Product manager: past experience partnering with product managers, recommendations based on different scenarios, how to improve Spotify. 
  3. Data scientist: basic machine learning, recommendation algorithm evaluation, cold start problem: launching a playlist in a new country, how do we know if this playlist should be included or featured on the homepage without enough customer data.
  4. Take home presentation to the whole team.

Spotify Data Scientist offer

Received the offer one week after the virtual onsite interview.


Here is a Spotify data scientist interview case study.

If you are preparing for a data scientist job interview and want to practice mock interviews with FAANG hiring managers, feel free to use our coaching service.

If you have questions, or want to share your answers, discuss in our forum.



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