Top 17 Adobe Interview Questions

Overview

Adobe, more than just the ‘Photoshop company,’ is one of the world’s largest data collectors, handling 35 petabytes of customer data and processing a trillion transactions per quarter. Its data science team plays a crucial role in leveraging this massive data, solving unique problems, inferring patterns, and letting ideas come to life that helps customers build brand loyalty.

This guide provides the top 17 Adobe interview questions, spanning coding, SQL, probability and statistics, and machine learning. These will equip you with expert tips and strategies that will surely help you ace your upcoming interview!

Adobe Interview Process

Joining one of the leading software companies in the world can be an exciting opportunity for growth and impact. Understanding the hiring process at Adobe is crucial to ensuring you make a seamless transition into your dream career.

1. Submit an application

Take the first step towards #AdobeLife by sharing your skills, experience, and aspirations. Don’t hesitate to apply, as Adobe offers hundreds of roles. If your initial application isn’t a perfect match, keep trying and explore other opportunities within the company.

2.Introductory phone interview

If your qualifications align with Adobe’s requirements, a member of the talent team will arrange an introductory phone interview. This conversation provides an opportunity to delve deeper into your background, and career goals and clarify any questions you may have about the role or Adobe as a whole.

It’s also an excellent chance to inquire about the subsequent stages of the hiring process. Depending on the outcome, you may proceed to the next step—a conversation with the Hiring Manager.

3. Hiring Manager Interview

During the hiring manager interview, you’ll engage in a discussion regarding the specific role you applied for. The hiring manager will evaluate your skills and gauge your level of interest. This is your chance to ask insightful questions about the position and the team, ensuring alignment with your professional objectives.

After the interview, expect to receive a follow-up email or call from the recruiter, providing feedback or potentially progressing to the next stage.

4. Assessment

Depending on the role, you may be asked to complete a take-home assessment, such as a role play, coding exercise, or content/writing assignment. These assessments aim to give you a practical glimpse into the day-to-day responsibilities and help Adobe assess your capabilities accurately.

5. Face-to-Face Interviews

At this stage, you will have the opportunity to participate in face-to-face interviews, allowing you to gain further insights into Adobe’s culture and the broader team you’ll be collaborating with regularly. These interviews serve to explore your professional experience in more detail and provide a comprehensive assessment of your skills and fit within the organization.

6. Decision Stage

After evaluating all the information gathered during the interview process, the hiring team will convene to make a final decision. If you are selected for the role, the recruiter will extend a verbal offer, expressing Adobe’s interest in having you on board. In the event you are not selected, Adobe’s recruiters will reach out to you with feedback to assist you in your future endeavors.

7. Offer & Pre-Employment Checks

Upon acceptance of the offer, you will receive an offer letter and new hire documents for review and signature. Adobe will require proof of your right to work and the contact details of your references. Pre-employment checks, including background checks and conflict-of-interest surveys, may also be conducted based on regional requirements and local laws.

8. New Hire Onboarding

Congratulations! You are now on the cusp of joining the Adobe family. Once you have accepted the offer, the recruiting team will provide you with comprehensive information about the new hire onboarding process. Expect a combination of trainer-led lessons, group work, and self-paced sessions conducted virtually over platforms like Microsoft Teams. Embrace the journey and get ready to experience #AdobeLife to the fullest.

Adobe Coding Interview Questions

1 - Write a function replace_words to stem all the words in the sentence with the root forming it.

In data science, there exists the concept of stemming, which is the heuristic of chopping off the end of a word to clean and bucket it into an easier feature set.

Given a dictionary consisting of many roots and a sentence, write a function replace_words to stem all the words in the sentence with the root forming it. If a word has many roots that can form it, replace it with the root with the shortest length.

2 - Develop a function word_frequency to compute the frequency of words in a list of sentences.

You’re hired by a literary newspaper for an unusual project. Poems are given as a list of strings called sentences. The function should return a dictionary of the frequency that words are used in the poem. The keys should be a number representing the frequency, and the value should be a list of words with that frequency. All words should be processed in lowercase.

3 - Write a function digit_accumulator to calculate the sum of digits in a floating-point number represented as a string. 

You are given a string that represents a floating-point number. Write a function that returns the sum of every digit in the string.

To practice Algorithms interview questions, consider using the Python learning path or the full list of Algorithms questions in our database.

Adobe SQL Interview Questions

4 - How would you extract all entries from the flights table in an airline database?

Assuming you work for an airline where the flights table contains information about all booked flights, how would you select all the entries from this table?

Example:

Input:

Column Type
id INTEGER
source_location VARCHAR
destination_location VARCHAR
plane_id INTEGER

Output:

Column Type
id INTEGER
source_location VARCHAR
destination_location VARCHAR
plane_id INTEGER

5 - How would you identify neighborhoods with no users from two tables, users and neighborhoods?

You have users table containing demographic information and the neighborhood they live in and a neighborhoods table. Write a query that returns all neighborhoods with zero users.

6 - How to determine the percentage of search queries with all ratings less than 3 from a Facebook search results table?

You’re given a table that represents search results from searches on Facebook. Write a query to compute a metric to measure the quality of the search results for each query.

Example:

Input:

search_result

Column Type
query VARCHAR
result_id INTEGER
position INTEGER
rating INTEGER

Output:

Column Type
query VARCHAR
avg_rating FLOAT

Adobe Probability & Statistics Interview Questions

10 - What is the probability of a biased coin landing as heads 5 times out of 6 tosses? 

The coin lands as heads 30% of the time. What is the probability of it landing as heads exactly 5 times out of 6 tosses?

11 - How to generate a uniformly distributed list of zeros and ones using an unfair coin?

 Given an unfair coin with unequal probabilities of heads and tails, how would you create an algorithm that generates a uniformly distributed list of zeros and ones using only the coin toss outcomes?

12 - What’s the probability of drawing three increasingly larger cards from a shuffled deck of 500? 

Imagine a shuffled deck of 500 cards numbered from 1 to 500. You draw three cards, one at a time. What’s the probability that each card is larger than the previous one?

For mastering Probability & Statistics, consider the statistics and A/B testing learning path and the probability learning path. These resources will provide you with a comprehensive understanding of the subject.

Adobe Machine Learning Interview Questions

13 - How would you design a model for a bank to detect fraudulent transactions and alert customers via text messages? 

Imagine working at a bank that wants to detect fraud on its platform. The bank plans to implement a text messaging service that will inform customers whenever the model flags a fraudulent transaction, allowing them to confirm or reject the transaction via a text response. How would you go about building this model?

14 - How would you prevent overfitting in tree-based classification models? 

Suppose you’re building a tree-based classification model. Overfitting is a common issue that can affect the model’s generalization ability to new data. What strategies would you employ to combat overfitting in this context?

15 - How would you build a model for keyword bidding optimization given historical bidding data?

Assume you’re tasked with optimizing keyword bidding. You have access to a dataset with two columns: one with keywords that have been bid on and another with the corresponding bid prices. Based on this data, how would you construct a model to bid on a new, unseen keyword?

16 - Using logic, sketch out a proof that a k-Means clustering algorithm will converge in a finite number of steps.

k-Means is a clustering algorithm that clusters a set of points N into k clusters. The k is chosen by the model developer. Once the algorithm finishes running, each observation will be assigned to one cluster.

With any specification of k, the algorithm will eventually converge; that is, no more updates will be possible and each observation will be assigned to a cluster.

17 - How can we provide a reason for a loan rejection if we can’t access the feature weights of our binary classification model?

Assume you’re tasked with providing reasons for loan rejections. You have access to a binary classification model that decides whether an applicant is qualified for a loan, but you can’t access the feature weights. Based on this constraint, how would you determine and communicate the reason for rejecting an applicant?

To prepare for machine learning interview questions, consider using the machine learning learning path. These resources will help you understand and solve complex machine learning problems.