Updated by Databricks candidates
Forward Deployed Engineer Interview Experience
When I went through Databricks, it honestly felt like a Palantir-style FDE loop had been transplanted over. The decomp round was so vague that if I skipped stakeholder questions and KPIs and jumped into architecture, I would have been dead.
Interview process
I got an offer for Databricks FDE, and the loop felt very structured but also pretty different from a normal SWE interview. Mine was fully remote, and the stages were recruiter, a rapid-fire technical screen, a separate practical coding round, a decomp round, and then leadership. The coding itself was not absurd LeetCode, which I appreciated. The most important round was decomp, where I had to treat the interviewer almost like a client and clarify stakeholder, scope, and KPI before touching architecture. The whole process felt like they were testing whether I could own an end-to-end enterprise solution fast.
- Recruiter screen
- Phone interview
- Technical interview
- Final round
Interview rounds
9 questions across 5 rounds
Recruiter screen
2 questions
Overview
I started with a very standard recruiter screen. It was totally non-technical and mostly just logistics plus a basic why-Databricks check.
Question types asked
Specific questions asked
Where are you based out of?
I just kept this part straightforward. It was the usual logistics, where I was based, general fit, and why I wanted Databricks. Nothing tricky happened here and I treated it like a standard recruiter call before the real technical stuff started.
Phone interview
2 questions
Unlock 1.8k+ interview experiences
Read the rest of this interview, plus new experiences added weekly.
More Databricks interview experiences
Forward Deployed EngineerDatabricks·Oct 2026
“Databricks tries to prepare you well by giving very elaborate instructions on what to expect and how to prepare”
2 rounds2 questionsRead full interview
Product ManagerDatabricks·Sep 2026
“The process was quite straightforward. I had time to work on my PRD assignment and the guidelines were helpful. The only thing is that because you only get a week to complete it, the work can be vigorous. ”
2 rounds5 questionsRead full interview
Engineering ManagerDatabricks·Aug 2026
“I got reached out by HM directly, then recruiter call with some hygiene questions - they asked me to prepare well for system design as most candidate chipped during that round. So was I eventually.. I was able to give a high-level design of working solution with several area I proactively did deep dive, interviewer also dig in other areas. During those digging into details since I didn't have the actual experience building such an app in real work, I asked for hints (twice), that probably didn't click with the interviewer.”
2 rounds2 questionsRead full interview
See all 2 Databricks Forward Deployed Engineer interview experiences →