Hello! If you've been directed here, this means you've been asked to prepare for a technical interview!
During the call, we'd like to invite you to do a pair programming scenario (lasting approximately 30 minutes) with us followed by a technical discussion to find out more about your technical experience. The exercise will be performed in a technology that is familiar to you, such as SQL or PySpark. This is a relaxed exercise, we are not testing your ability to understand the syntax, nor do we expect you to complete it in the 30 minute slot.
We will be reviewing the following:
- Approach and passion for developing data solutions
- Your thought process when solving a problem
- How you communicate and interact with our consultants
Following the scenario, we would like to ask you some technical questions surrounding your skills and experience in more detail to get a good understanding of how you like to work within a team. Towards the end of the discussion, we will invite you to ask us any questions you may have about Opencast too.
In the technical discussion, we will cover topics such as:
- Understanding of working with data
- How you test your pipelines
- Knowing what tools to use
- Engaging with wider teams
Please ensure that you have the following ready and installed:
- .NET 8 SDK (https://dotnet.microsoft.com/en-us/download - needed for the VS Code polyglot notebook interface)
- Visual Studio Code (https://code.visualstudio.com/), with the following extensions:
- Live Share (https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=MS-vsliveshare.vsliveshare&ssr=false#overview)
- Polyglot Notebooks (if doing the VIP Customer scenario - https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ms-dotnettools.dotnet-interactive-vscode)
- Jupyter (if doing the Petrol Prices scenario - https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ms-toolsai.jupyter)
- One of the following accounts to sign into Live Share:
- Github
- Microsoft Account
Please have this all set up PRIOR to your interview. If you do not have them installed prior to your interview we will be unable to go ahead and will have to reschedule your interview for an alternative date. If you do have any issues with VS Code or the LiveShare extensions during the interview we will be able to address these and get you set up for the exercise.
Due to the short period of time that we have during the interview, we're providing data files for you to investigate before the interview. We will provide the full scenario to you during the interview. We will have told you which data set you need ahead of time (either Petrol Prices (in petrol_prices) or VIP Customer (in vip_customer)).
The interviewer will provide the VS Code live share link via the MS Teams chat window. You can follow that link to log into the remote pairing session. Following the link may require you login to the VS Code live share service with either your GitHub or Microsoft account.
We recognise how AI-based tools such as GitHub Copilot will play a big part in the future of software development. However, for the duration of the interview, we'd appreciate that any such tool to be disabled - to allow us to focus on thinking about the code from scratch ourselves.
Additionally, please be aware that our interviewers can identify if you are using Google to copy and paste solutions. While we allow the use of Google to aid in this exercise, we do not want candidates to copy these solutions.