have a PayPal data engineering final round coming up in about 3 weeks and the info i've found is pretty sparse and dated. some stuff on glassdoor is from 2022 which might as well be ancient history at this point.
anyone been through a PayPal loop recently, for any role: data eng, backend SWE, platform, whatever? specifically curious about: how much SQL vs. system design vs. coding they lean on whether behavioral is a separate round or baked into every round what "cultural fit" actually means to them in practice
drop whatever you have. thanks in advance.
4 replies
ds_dmitri
did a data science loop at PayPal ~6 months ago. SQL was a full round, not just a warmup question. like, a genuinely hard analytical problem with a messy schema. behavioral was its own dedicated round. and they asked me to explain one of my past models in plain language, simulating a stakeholder conversation.
backend_bekah
behavioral for SWE was separate, last round in the panel. each coding round did have a 5 min "tell me about yourself / why PayPal" opener but it wasn't evaluated formally i think. main behavioral was structured and they used STAR explicitly.
ops_omar
for a biz ops role i was asked a case-style question in the behavioral round, not just STAR. something like "a payment processing team has 20% latency spike, walk me through how you'd triage." they wanted structured thinking, not necessarily the right answer.
de_derek
interesting, so they blur case and behavioral in non-eng roles. good to know. data eng is probably more SQL-heavy. thanks.