Calculate percentile rank per date
Last updated: May 14, 2026
Quick Overview
Write a query to compute percentile rank grouped by date, handling edge cases like nulls and duplicates.
Visa
May 14, 202610
4
1,554 solved
Write a query to compute percentile rank grouped by date, handling edge cases like nulls and duplicates.
Visa asks this during the Phone Screen because data engineering skills are critical for the role. You should be comfortable with complex joins, window functions, CTEs, and performance optimization.
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
How to Approach This
- Clarify the schema and expected output format before writing queries.
- Use CTEs (WITH clauses) to break complex queries into readable steps.
- Consider window functions (ROW_NUMBER, RANK, LAG, LEAD) for ranking and sequential analysis.
- Watch for NULLs, duplicates, and edge cases in JOINs and GROUP BY.
- For pandas, prefer vectorized operations over row-by-row iteration.
Possible Follow-up Questions
- Can you rewrite this without using subqueries?
- What indexes would you create to support this query?
- How would you handle slowly changing dimensions in this scenario?
- What would you do if this query needs to run every 5 minutes?
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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 ...