Data Engineer Interview Mentorship

The goal is to sharpen the exact skills a senior-level data engineering interview will probe so that I walk in confident and ready. After twelve years on the job I already know the fundamentals; what I need now is a structured series of sessions that target two key areas:

• Deep-dive technical mastery, specifically python, sql, Hadoop, Spark and Kafka
• Rigorous case-study style problem solving, mirroring the whiteboard or live-coding format used by most FAANG-scale companies

Each session should pair concise theory refreshers with hands-on exercises—think cluster configuration walk-throughs, optimisation scenarios, streaming pipeline design and end-to-end data-flow troubleshooting. I also want timed mock interviews where you fire real questions, then give immediate, detailed feedback on clarity, depth and trade-off analysis.

I can handle pre-work between meetings, so feel free to assign take-home challenges. If you believe touching briefly on Redshift/Snowflake architecture or tightening my Python-SQL idioms will strengthen my narrative, I’m open to short detours, but the main focus remains Hadoop / Spark / Kafka and case-based problem solving.

Please outline:
1. The proposed session plan with topics per meeting.
2. Tools you’ll use for remote clusters or shared coding (e.g., Docker images, Jupyter notebooks, CoderPad, Google Meet).
3. How you will measure readiness—rubrics, scorecards, or milestone mock interviews.

I plan to start next week and can meet in the evenings IST. Let’s set up a quick call to finalise the schedule once the plan is agreed.