American Express Data Engineer Interview Guide

The American Express data engineer loop, round by round: what each stage tests, example questions with the guidance interviewers actually score, the mistakes that sink strong candidates, and how to prepare.

Last updated: July 31, 2026Proudly published by: Jeff Wahl

1 real American Express interview questions

Reported by candidates from real loops, tagged by domain, round, level, and year. Expand for what the round is scoring.

SQLL3

Count transactions per cardholder per month that were both approved and settled; schema: card_transactions(transaction_id INTEGER, card_id INTEGER, cardholder_id INTEGER, transaction_date DATE, amount DECIMAL, status VARCHAR), settlement_transactions(settlement_id INTEGER, transaction_id INTEGER, settlement_date DATE, status VARCHAR)

Onsite · sql

Try a American Express-style SQL round

Find every user active on 3 or more CONSECUTIVE days. This gaps-and-islands shape shows up in nearly every DE SQL round. Edit the query and run it against the seed data.

	/* Users active on 3+ consecutive days. */
	/* Hint: date minus a per-user ROW_NUMBER is constant within a streak. */
	WITH streaks AS (
	SELECT
	user_id,
	activity_date,
	activity_date - CAST(
	(ROW_NUMBER() OVER (
	PARTITION BY user_id
	ORDER BY activity_date
	))
	AS INT
	) AS grp
	FROM user_sessions
	)

	SELECT
	user_id
	FROM streaks
	GROUP BY user_id, grp
	HAVING COUNT(*) >= 3

American Express is hiring data engineers now

The roles behind this loop. Prep against the levels and locations they are actually filling.

Open roles

American Express data engineer · live from career pages

open roles

New York

top metro

Lead and develop high-performing engineering teams across a global delivery model.

L4New York84d ago

Where they hire

New York

Levels hiring

L41

Updated Jul 31, 20261 open listing across 1 city

American Express compensation and culture

The numbers, tech stack, and team structure live on the company overview.

Data engineering at American Express→

The role, comp by level, tech stack, teams, and culture signals.

Compare American Express with other data engineering employers

How the role, pay, and loop stack up against peer companies.

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02 / Why practice

Prepare at American Express interview difficulty

01
Reading a solution is not the same as writing one
Every engineer who has frozen on a query they had read a dozen times knows the gap. The only preparation that closes it is producing the answer yourself, under time, before the interview does it for you
02
76% of hiring managers reject on the coding task, not the resume
From HackerRank's 2024 Developer Skills Report. Candidates who look strong on paper still fail the live screen if they haven't done timed, executable practice
03
5 problem shapes cover 80% of data engineer loops
Dedup, sessionization, top-N-per-group, slowly-changing dimensions, partition tricks. Writing the shapes by hand turns the unfamiliar into pattern recognition

Practice American Express-level SQL

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