Morgan Stanley Data Engineer Interview Guide

The Morgan Stanley 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

What the Morgan Stanley loop tests: domains and difficulty

Our prediction of the question mix by domain and difficulty for this company's data engineer loop, from live listings and interview reports.

By domain

SQL

43%

Python

57%

By difficulty

Easy

57%

Medium

21%

Hard

21%

The domain and difficulty mix we predict for a Morgan Stanley data engineer loop, across 14 problems. It updates as more Morgan Stanley data lands.

Updated Jul 31, 202614 predicted Morgan Stanley problems

Try a Morgan Stanley-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

Practice the Morgan Stanley loop

The problems our model expects in this company's interview, grouped by round. Work the shapes that come up, not the ones that read well on a list.

SQL3 to work

High Volume Batch Jobs

Python3 to work

Frequency CountingSolve →

All Morgan Stanley-style problems →

Morgan Stanley is hiring data engineers now

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

Hiring now

Morgan Stanley data engineer · live from career pages

open roles

New York

top metro

Teams operate globally, owning systems end-to-end with strong focus on innovation and engineering excellence

L4New York15d ago

Develop, maintain, and operationalize data quality controls on portfolio transaction, holding, and valuation datasets.

L4Multiple locations18d ago

This is a Software Engineering position at the Vice President level, which is part of the job family responsible for developing and maintaining software solutions that support business needs.

L4New York21d ago

Develop a thorough understanding of technology systems, data stores, data pipelines, job streams, and downstream data consumers.

L3New York55d ago

The Lead Data engineer needs to be an expert in writing and optimizing SQL queries.

L7Seattle73d ago

New postings per week

5/18

6/1

7/6

7/13

week beginning · ~8 weeks of data

Where they hire

New York

Seattle

Levels hiring

L31L43L71

Updated Jul 31, 20265 open listings across 2 cities

Morgan Stanley compensation and culture

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

Data engineering at Morgan Stanley→

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

Compare Morgan Stanley with other data engineering employers

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

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Data engineering at Amazon→

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Data engineering at Databricks→

Compare the role, comp, and interview loop.

02 / Why practice

Prepare at Morgan Stanley 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 Morgan Stanley-level SQL

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