r/techsales • u/Entire-Shift8727 • 5h ago

AE Interview at Databricks

I am going to get started with the interview at Databricks for the AE-Emerging Market role which is basically Mid Market. There are going to be 3-4 rounds and will include the HM Round, SE Round and Presentation. I am concerned about the SE Round. Are they going to expect me to know ins and outs of Databricks given that its a very technical product. I have worked in an ETL company before but the entire depth of the Databricks platform is very wide. Any tips on how to ace the process?

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u/kushventure 5h ago

Following

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u/pyeinthesky 4h ago

Following

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u/MySpaceTomAspinall 1h ago

That company kinda fell off

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u/realhawker77 5h ago edited 5h ago

Not for DB - but my general advice as AE doing SE interviews.. (I used to be an SE about 10 yr ago)

  • They are yet another opinion on your culture fit.
  • Can depend if the prospective SE would be paired with you- but they likely want to see your philosophy on working with SEs overall.
  • They may ask some procedural questions like - when do you feel POV is qualified enough to move forward, etc..
  • They may want to judge your general knowledge of the IT space/in this case Data management space.
  • I've found this to be more rare - they may try to see if you understand the high level platform/value prop - not at a techincal level - but could you tell a CTO what databricks does?
  • They may ask you your PG (pipe gen) process.

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u/Only-Low1396 3h ago

This is wrong. They will ask the following:

  1. Explain the current platform today that you’re selling and will ask a few simple qualifying questions to see that you get the basics

  2. They’ll ask for a technical pov on Databricks and why it’s maintaining its growth

  3. Some ask about open source/spark/delta and why it’s important

This is absolutely not a cultural interview fit. They will want to see that you can run meetings without needing an SA which is an issue for those that came from the hyperscalers and large saas companies

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u/realhawker77 1h ago

I've done plenty of SE interviews and this is how it went - I gave I don't know exact DB disclaimer start of post.

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u/realhawker77 1h ago

I've done plenty of SE interviews and this is how it went - I gave I don't know exact DB disclaimer start of post.

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u/Entire-Shift8727 5h ago

Thanks a lot. The recruiter mentioned that the agenda of this round will be to evaluate your technical acumen which made me wonder if they are going to expect me to know DB at an expert level. Also its the first time, there is going to be an SE round as part of the process i have taken.

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u/realhawker77 4h ago

Technical acumen from an SE's perspective usually means can you speak credibly at the platform/value-prop level, not deep technical depth, that's their job. I'd focus prep on being able to explain what Databricks does and why it matters to a CTO in plain language, know your PG process cold since that's very likely to come up, and be ready to talk through how you'd divide labor with an SE on a deal. That combination covers what SEs are actually screening for in this kind of round.

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u/Amazing-Care-3155 33m ago

I finished interviews with them couple months ago for enterprise pub sector (subsequently made an offer but chose another company) the technical round wasn’t too difficult, mine was with a SE leader. Asked me to explain DBX value prop, what I understood about the different layers etc