Roku Data Engineer Interview Guide

The Roku 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 Roku 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

50%

Python

50%

By difficulty

Easy

50%

Medium

25%

Hard

25%

The domain and difficulty mix we predict for a Roku data engineer loop, across 12 problems. It updates as more Roku data lands.

Updated Jul 31, 202612 predicted Roku problems

1 real Roku interview questions

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

Data modelingL6 · 2025

1. Design a data model for streaming

Recruiter · screen

Try a Roku-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 Roku 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

Solve →

EASY~5m

Low-Byte CDN Responses

Date ArithmeticSolve →

Python3 to work

Frequency CountingSolve →

All Roku-style problems →

Roku is hiring data engineers now

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

Hiring now

Roku data engineer · live from career pages

open roles

Austin

top metro

Build highly scalable, available, and fault-tolerant distributed data processing systems (batch and streaming) that process tens of terabytes of data daily and manage a petabyte-scale data warehouse

L5San JoseNEW

Build highly scalable, available, fault-tolerant distributed data processing systems (batch and streaming systems) processing over 10s of terabytes of data ingested every day and petabyte-sized data warehouse

L5BengaluruNEW

Building highly scalable, fault-tolerant distributed data processing systems (batch and streaming) that handle tens of terabytes of data each day, supporting a petabyte-scale data warehouse.

L5ManchesterNEW

Create scalable batch and streaming pipelines for billions of daily ad events with strong freshness, accuracy, and schema consistency

L4CambridgeNEW

Develop distributed data processing jobs for large-scale event processing and experiment analytics

L5Multiple locationsNEW

L5Austin7d ago

New postings per week

5/25

7/20

7/27

week beginning · ~9 weeks of data

Where they hire

Austin

San Francisco Bay Area

Boston

Bangalore

Levels hiring

L41L55

Updated Jul 31, 202613 open listings across 4 cities

Roku compensation and culture

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

Data engineering at Roku→

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

Compare Roku with other data engineering employers

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

Data engineering at Airbnb→

Compare the role, comp, and interview loop.

Data engineering at Amazon→

Compare the role, comp, and interview loop.

Data engineering at Apple→

Compare the role, comp, and interview loop.

Data engineering at Databricks→

Compare the role, comp, and interview loop.

02 / Why practice

Prepare at Roku 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 Roku-level SQL

Related Guides

Data Engineering at Roku→

The Roku DE role, comp, tech stack, and culture.

DE Interview Prep Guide→

Complete preparation framework for data engineering interviews.

Data Modeling Questions→

Star schema, SCD, grain definition, and normalization.