Calculate engagement score per date

Last updated: November 29, 2025

Quick Overview

Write a query to compute engagement score grouped by region, handling edge cases like nulls and duplicates.

Palo Alto Networks
Data Manipulation (SQL/Python)
Data Scientist
Palo Alto Networks
November 29, 2025
Data Scientist
Technical Screen
Data Manipulation (SQL/Python)
Medium

11

7

118 solved


Write a query to compute engagement score grouped by region, handling edge cases like nulls and duplicates.

This question from Palo Alto Networks's Technical Screen tests practical data skills. The interviewer wants to see clean, efficient queries that handle edge cases like NULLs, duplicates, and large datasets.

What the Interviewer Expects
  • Use advanced SQL features: window functions, CTEs, subqueries
  • Write efficient queries that avoid common performance pitfalls
  • Handle complex data transformations with multiple joins and aggregations
  • Discuss indexing strategy and query optimization
  • Address data quality issues: duplicates, missing values, outliers
Key Topics to Cover
NULL handling and COALESCE
Aggregate functions and GROUP BY
Date/time manipulation
JOIN types and when to use each
How to Approach This
  1. Clarify the schema and expected output format before writing queries.
  2. Use CTEs (WITH clauses) to break complex queries into readable steps.
  3. Consider window functions (ROW_NUMBER, RANK, LAG, LEAD) for ranking and sequential analysis.
  4. Watch for NULLs, duplicates, and edge cases in JOINs and GROUP BY.
  5. For pandas, prefer vectorized operations over row-by-row iteration.
Possible Follow-up Questions
  • How would you optimize this query for a table with 100 million rows?
  • How would you handle slowly changing dimensions in this scenario?
  • What indexes would you create to support this query?
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Solution Pattern

```sql WITH filtered_data AS ( SELECT * FROM main_table WHERE condition = 'value' AND date_col >= '2024-01-01' ), aggregated AS ( SELECT ...


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