Databricks sells AI. 24 of its 29 design questions are classic, not AI.

• 24 of Databricks’ 29 design questions are classic system design. 5 are about AI systems or ML. At Anthropic it is 6 classic of 22.
• 5 of the 6 questions reported the most are reported at no other company we track. 5 of the 6 are coding, and all were asked since Sep 11, 2026.
• The coding screen draws from a small set of 4 problems, and 3 of them are among the 6 reported the most.
• 7 questions test concurrency. Candidates call the concurrency round the hardest of the loop.
• Every one of the 11 online test questions we hold was last asked by Sep 2024. 26 of the 74 questions were asked since Sep 1, 2026.

24 of 29 design questions are classic system design, closer to Snowflake than to OpenAI

Databricks sells a data and AI platform. If you are also prepping for OpenAI or Anthropic, expect its design questions to look different from theirs. We counted every design question reported at Databricks (n=29): 24 are classic system design, the kind you find in a system design book, and 5 are AI system or ML design. Those 5 are retrieve tables and notebooks for a data-aware coding agent, a harmful content detection system, a design retrieval for a coding agent over a code base, an LLM content safety service and a GPU scheduling platform.

Snowflake, another data platform, has 20 classic of 23. OpenAI has 27 of 43 (63%), and Anthropic 6 of 22. If you prepped AI system design for the labs, you still need the classics for Databricks.

The design round runs 60 minutes, and you may write it in a Google Doc instead of on a whiteboard. The interviewer keeps extending the problem. Expect a smaller, more concrete system than at most big tech companies: API, schema, workflow, failure handling and a few scaling and concurrency choices.

The 6 questions reported the most were all asked since Sep 11, 2026, and 5 show up nowhere else

These 6 are reported at Databricks more than any of its other questions, newest first:

• Durable event log writer shared by thousands of threads, last asked Oct 15, 2026, reported at no other company we track
• Generalized tic-tac-toe with k in a row, last asked Oct 15, 2026
• Design a book price aggregator, last asked Sep 11, 2026, reported at no other company we track
• Fastest single-mode commute on a city grid, last asked Sep 11, 2026, reported at no other company we track
• Key-value store that reports its recent request rate, last asked Sep 11, 2026, reported at no other company we track
• Ordered IP firewall with CIDR rules, last asked Sep 11, 2026, reported at no other company we track

5 are coding and one is design. The firewall, the store that tracks its own request rate and the log many threads write to are small systems you build inside the hour. Across all 74 questions, 46 are reported at no other company we track, 31 of the 40 coding ones among them. A shared question bank for big tech covers little of this.

The coding screen draws from a set of 4 problems

The coding screen is 60 minutes of live coding in a runnable editor. Candidates describe one problem from a small set that keeps coming back: ordered IP firewall with CIDR rules, fastest single-mode commute on a city grid, snapshot set with frozen insertion-order iterators and key-value store that reports its recent request rate. 3 of the 4 are among the 6 reported the most. The interviewer pushes on edge cases and complexity, and Databricks makes a first estimate of your level after this round.

Staff backend candidates may get system design in this slot instead. Everyone else should be able to write all 4 from a blank editor, with tests, inside the hour.

7 questions test concurrency, and the concurrency round is the one candidates call hardest

The onsite has two algorithm rounds and a 60-minute concurrency round where you write correct, efficient multithreaded code. Most candidates call it the hardest round of the loop. The 7 questions tagged concurrency, newest first: durable event log writer shared by thousands of threads, a collaboratively edited playlist, thread-safe key-value store with atomic batch writes, blocking cache where reads wait for a missing key, a dependency-aware job scheduler, thread-safe single-machine chat server with channels and concurrent caching client for byte-range file reads.

Some loops make this a practical low-level round instead. The reported tasks include durable event log writer shared by thousands of threads, lazy array with deferred map and indexOf and hybrid run-length and bit-packing codec, plus file system tasks and a cache. If your language’s locks, condition variables and queues aren’t in your fingers, practise this round more than any other.

The 11 online test questions all date from Sep 2024 or earlier. The live rounds are current

Databricks’ questions by the round candidates named (n=64 with a known round). The onsite coding rounds produce the most. The timed online test is reported for some candidates only, and every one of its 11 questions we hold was last asked by Sep 2024.

1. Onsite coding, newest Oct 202623 questions
2. System design, newest Oct 202619 questions
3. Online test, newest Sep 202411 questions
4. Coding screen, newest Oct 20267 questions
5. Recruiter, values, newest Sep 20264 questions

26 of the 74 questions were asked since Sep 1, 2026, 14 of them coding. Spend your time on the live rounds. Treat the online test bank as warm-up, not as a list of what you will get.

What this means for your prep

1. Write the 4 screen problems from scratch: ordered IP firewall with CIDR rules, fastest single-mode commute on a city grid, snapshot set with frozen insertion-order iterators and key-value store that reports its recent request rate. Edge cases and complexity, 60 minutes each.
2. Drill concurrency in the language you will use. Start with durable event log writer shared by thousands of threads, thread-safe key-value store with atomic batch writes and blocking cache where reads wait for a missing key. The round candidates call hardest is a concurrency round.
3. Keep your classic system design sharp. 24 of 29 design questions are classic. Practise writing a design in a doc, with the API, schema and failure handling first.
4. Skip the big shared question banks. 46 of 74 Databricks questions are reported nowhere else we track. Work from the Databricks question list, newest first.
5. Brief your references before the onsite. References, a hiring committee and a VP sign-off follow, and references weigh more than at most companies.