Pyspark Interview Questions

22 real Pyspark questions asked in live technical interviews — each with a model answer. Updated weekly.

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What is question 2 in PySpark?🟡 Medium · Conceptual · Asked 2×Write PySpark code to read a JSON file containing records with fields first_name and last_name. Drop records where first_name is null. Add a new column FULL_NAME by concatenating first_name and last_name. Then display all three columns only when FULL_NAME length is greater than 30 characters.🟡 Medium · Coding · Asked 2×Let's say you have a notebook on PySpark that is running slow. What steps would you take to optimize it?🟡 Medium · Conceptual · Asked 1×How can I implement the given SQL query using PySpark instead of SQL?🟡 Medium · Coding · Asked 1×You have experience with PySpark. Could you explain the two main components of PySpark?🟡 Medium · Conceptual · Asked 1×You have hands‑on experience with PySpark, right? How does a PySpark job execute, and how do you run a PySpark job?🟡 Medium · Conceptual · Asked 1×How does PySpark distribute data across a cluster, and what Spark configurations would you use to process and transform large data files in a distributed manner?🟡 Medium · Conceptual · Asked 1×How would you retrieve the top two orders by amount for each store for a given month using PySpark?🟡 Medium · Coding · Asked 1×How do you use the explode() function on the 'skills' column in a PySpark DataFrame to create a separate row for each skill while preserving the 'name' column?🟢 Easy · Coding · Asked 1×Give an example of PySpark code to perform an operation on a DataFrame.🟡 Medium · Coding · Asked 1×How do you read a CSV file in PySpark?🟢 Easy · Conceptual · Asked 1×In PySpark, please write a code snippet to perform a join between two DataFrames.🟡 Medium · Coding · Asked 1×How would you isolate and fix a skewed join in a PySpark job using Spark UI and AWS CloudWatch?🟡 Medium · Conceptual · Asked 1×How was PySpark deployed within the AWS environment, and what services were used?🟡 Medium · Conceptual · Asked 1×Give PySpark code to calculate the friend acceptance rate for each date when friend requests were sent. A request is sent if action = 'sent' and accepted if action = 'accepted'. If a request is not accepted, there is no record of it being accepted in the table. The output should only include dates where requests were sent and at least one of them was accepted (acceptance can occur on any date after the request is sent).🟡 Medium · Coding · Asked 1×How do you optimize Pyspark?🔴 Hard · System Design · Asked 1×What is a PySpark job?🟡 Medium · Conceptual · Asked 1×What is a PySpark job?🟡 Medium · Conceptual · Asked 1×What is the difference between Pandas and PySpark?🟡 Medium · Conceptual · Asked 1×What is the difference between Pandas and PySpark?🟡 Medium · Conceptual · Asked 1×How do you drop duplicate records in PySpark?🟡 Medium · Coding · Asked 1×How do you drop duplicate records in PySpark?🟡 Medium · Coding · Asked 1×

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