Microsoft Data Science Interview Questions
Microsoft has been a big player in the data science industry after Azure and it’s machine learning tools have been slowly dominating as the biggest service provider in the cloud-computing market. As a result, Microsoft has been building out its data science team slowly but surely over the past five years to become one of the biggest companies hiring for the role.
The Data Scientist Role
The role of a data scientist at Microsoft varies a lot and is dependent on whichever team you interview with. Each Microsoft data science job is different and spans from analytics-based roles to more machine learning heavy. As a huge multi-conglomerate corporation, Microsoft has different teams that work on speech and language, artificial intelligence, machine learning infrastructure on Azure, data science consulting for cloud computing, and much more.
Required Skills
Microsoft generally prefers to hire experienced candidates with about a minimum of 2+ years of experience working in data science for a mid-level role. General qualifications are:
Ph.D. in a quantitative field and previous experience in DNN, NLP, time series, reinforcement learning, network analysis, causal inference or any related areas.
Proficiency in any of the following numerical programming languages (Python/Numpy/Scipy, R, SQL, C#, or Spark).
Experience with cloud-based architectures such as AWS or Azure.
What are the types of data scientists?
Microsoft has a department under engineering that is called data and applied science . Employees in this department are often placed in teams and go by three main titles: data scientists, applied scientists, and machine learning engineers . Depending on the team their functions would include:
Writing codes to ship models to production.
Writing codes for machine learning algorithms to be used by other data scientists.
Working with customers directly or indirectly to resolve technical issues.
Working on metrics and experimentation.
Working on product features.
The ideal candidate for the Microsoft Data and Applied Scientist role is expected to be able to apply a breadth of machine learning tools and analytical techniques to answer a wide range of high-impact business questions and present the insights in a concise and effective manner.
The Microsoft Data Scientist Interview
Azure ML
Initial Screen
After submitting your application for the job, the first phone interview may or may not be a recruiter depending on the seniority level of the role. Many times the hiring manager will conduct a 30 minute interview first to understand your past experience.
Expect this part of the phone interview to come in two parts. You will be asked about your background and projects as well as a few technical interview questions....
