Big Tech platforms BI Analyst Interview Loop
BI analyst interviews at the big platforms are the least documented of the analyst roles. Still, the shape that keeps coming up matches the rest of the analyst family. There's a recruiter call, then a timed SQL screen that ends a lot of loops. After that come three to five interviews: a technical round, a case, a hiring-manager or cross-functional round, and behavioral. Amazon's Business Intelligence Engineer loop is the best documented, and it sets the pattern. It has a SQL gate, a visualization and metrics round, a business case, the hiring manager and the Bar Raiser.
Practice by round
Joins, aggregations, a ranking or filtering problem, and date handling, all timed. Candidates say it felt harder than it looked because of the clock.
Window functions, CTEs and multi-table joins on sales, shipment, complaint and user data. Think total sales in different currencies, users exclusive to a client, and updated records. BI interviewers also ask about the model behind the query, so be ready for that next.
The business case. You define a success metric, decide whether to launch, or size an opportunity from an estimation case. Details are left out on purpose, and you're scored on scoping and on what you recommend. Amazon's real loop adds a question on the weekly business review. Everywhere, the cross-functional round is the same case explained to someone who doesn't write SQL.
| Case study | Difficulty |
|---|---|
| Translator Improvement | Easy |
| Graph of Sales and Revenue | Easy |
| Recommended News Metrics | Medium |
| New Notification System | Medium |
| Clicks on Search Result | Medium |
| Teenager's Parents on Facebook | Medium |
| North Star Metric for E-Commerce | Medium |
| Measuring Social Media Campaign Success | Medium |
Averages versus medians, skewed distributions and outliers, A/B tests and hypothesis tests, sampling distributions and Type I error. Under each one sits the same question: can this number on a dashboard be trusted?
| Question | Difficulty |
|---|---|
| Statistical Hypothesis | Medium |
| Skewed Data | Medium |
| Difference-in-Differences for a Country Launch | Medium |
| Propensity Matching for an Opt-In Feature | Medium |
| An Instrument From a Rollout Glitch | Hard |