Agoda Data Science Interview Questions and Answers

Quick answer: Agoda's Data Scientist hiring runs a CodeSignal or HackerRank coding assessment, an HR screening call, and a technical interview, and candidates rate it unusually harshly (3.8 out of 5 difficulty, only 17% positive experience against a 56.3% company average). Data Analyst hiring uses a distinct Alooba assessment (MCQs, a short SQL section and a recorded video question) followed by SQL and business-case interviews. Agoda, part of Booking Holdings, runs a real Gurugram, India office with analytics roles, though we could not find India-specific interview content for data roles specifically.

About Agoda

Agoda is an online hotel, flight and travel-package booking platform and part of Booking Holdings, alongside Booking.com, Kayak, Priceline and OpenTable. Agoda is legally headquartered in Singapore, but its largest office is Bangkok, home to roughly 4,000 of the company's more than 7,000 employees, including most of engineering, data science and business intelligence. (Careers at Agoda; Agoda, A Truly Global Company) Agoda maintains a genuine India office in Gurugram, described on its own careers site as sitting "at the heart of one of India's most dynamic innovation and technology hubs," with India named as one of Agoda's fastest-growing markets and a standing Analytics department career page listing openings across locations. (Careers at Agoda, Gurugram; Careers at Agoda, Analytics)

Agoda's Interview Process

• Data Scientist loop: candidate reports converge on a CodeSignal (or in some cases HackerRank) coding assessment, an HR screening call on background and role fit, and a technical interview. Glassdoor's aggregate rates this loop 3.8 out of 5 for difficulty with only 17% of candidates reporting a positive experience, well below Agoda's own company-wide average of 56.3% positive, and an overall average of 27 days to hire. (Glassdoor; Blind)

• Sources disagree on exactly how many stages this loop has. Some candidate summaries describe the 3-stage version above; others, aggregated by third-party prep sites, describe a longer 6-stage version: resume screening, recruiter call, an assessment, a first interview, a case study, and a final round. We could not resolve which is more common, and it may simply depend on seniority or team. (Dataford)

• Data Analyst loop: starts with an Alooba assessment, three parts, roughly 16 to 18 multiple-choice questions in 25 minutes, a short SQL section (two queries, about 15 minutes), and a recorded video question with a behavioural prompt. Some candidates also report an AI-driven recruiter screen on the Maki Assessment platform, asking about SQL and Tableau proficiency and a scenario question on designing an A/B test. Technical interviews that follow mix SQL questions with case-style business problems. Average time to hire for this track is reported at around 18 days. (InterviewQuery)

What Candidates Report

For the Data Scientist track, reported themes include SQL and Python coding questions, easy-to-medium dynamic-programming problems, and a notably heavy dose of probability and statistics questions that candidates say have little direct overlap with day-to-day data science work. Other reported topics include comparing XGBoost against Random Forest and estimation-style "buy or sell" problems, where interviewers appear to weight business judgement and reasoning under ambiguity as much as technical correctness. (Glassdoor; Dataford)

For the Data Analyst track, reported case-style prompts include diagnosing a conversion-rate drop and evaluating campaign performance, alongside direct questions on SQL and Tableau proficiency and how a candidate would structure an A/B test. Interviewers reportedly focus more on how a candidate structures their reasoning than on the final answer. (InterviewQuery)

What We Could Not Verify

Glassdoor's own Data Scientist and Data Analyst interview pages returned a direct-access error for us, so every Glassdoor figure above (the 3.8 difficulty score, 17% positive rate, and day-to-hire averages) comes from a search-indexed summary rather than raw candidate reviews we read ourselves. We also saw one Glassdoor-derived figure claiming an average of just 1 day to hire for the Data Scientist role, which contradicts the same source's own 27-day overall average closely enough that we suspect a data artifact, so we have not repeated it as fact. We found no India-specific interview content for Data Scientist or Data Analyst roles: the one detailed, first-person India account we located, a Gurugram interview writeup, was for a Full Stack Software Engineer position, not a data role, so we have not treated it as evidence of Agoda's data-interview process, only as confirmation that Agoda does run multi-round technical loops out of its Gurugram office.

How to Prepare

• Drill probability and statistics beyond the basics, since candidates consistently flag this as unusually heavy for a data science interview.

• Practise timed coding on CodeSignal or HackerRank-style platforms, including SQL and Python under a clock.

• If applying as a Data Analyst, rehearse the Alooba format specifically: a quick multiple-choice section, a short SQL section, and a recorded video answer to a behavioural prompt.

• Prepare a business-reasoning narrative, such as diagnosing a metric drop end to end, since Agoda's case questions reward structured thinking over a fast final answer.