Nick’s previously held Software & Data roles at Facebook, Google, & SafeGraph (a geospatial analytics startup).
Currently, he’s the best-selling author of Ace the Data Science Interview, and Founder & CEO of DataLemur.
Nick’s also active on LinkedIn, where he shares career tips with his 160,000+ followers.
AppLovin uses SQL a lot to look at user engagement metrics in their Adjust service and to make sure that their personalized ad targeting works best. This is the main reason why AppLovin almost always tests candidates’ SQL coding skills in Data Science, Analytics, and
That’s why we’ve put together 10 AppLovin SQL interview questions for you to help you prepare. Can you answer them?
AppLovin is a leading mobile marketing platform that provides tools for mobile app developers to grow their businesses. Founded in 2012, AppLovin has rapidly grown into a major player in the mobile app ecosystem With offices globally, AppLovin drives significant revenue for mobile app developers by enabling user acquisition, monetization and measurement solutions
As AppLovin continues to grow, competition for jobs is increasing Interviews at AppLovin aim to assess candidates’ skills in areas like software development, data analysis, product management and marketing While interviews focus largely on technical abilities, AppLovin also evaluates candidates’ communication skills, problem-solving abilities and cultural fit.
To help you prepare for an interview at AppLovin, here are the top 20 most common interview questions candidates face:
Technical Interview Questions
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Tell me about your experience developing mobile apps and optimizing their user interfaces.
AppLovin wants developers who understand the importance of user experience (UX) and can create intuitive, responsive mobile app interfaces. Discuss projects where you improved UX through design principles like progressive disclosure and strategic CTAs. Mention any A/B testing to optimize interfaces.
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How do you approach troubleshooting complex software issues in large codebases?
Share your systematic approach to isolating issues through debugging tools, logging, and divide-and-conquer strategies. Discuss reviewing recent code changes, analyzing unit tests, and collaborating with teammates. Emphasize logical troubleshooting to uncover root causes.
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What strategies would you use to monitor and maintain a distributed system infrastructure?
AppLovin wants engineers familiar with monitoring tools like Nagios, Zabbix, and Datadog for tracking performance metrics and alerts. Discuss proactive monitoring, load balancing, redundancy planning, and chaos engineering techniques you’ve used to maintain system stability.
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How do you ensure your code is reusable, maintainable, and scalable when handling large data loads?
Share principles you follow like DRY, modular design, and rigorous testing. Discuss your experience with data structures, algorithms, and techniques like pagination to optimize large data handling. Emphasize writing clean, well-documented code and using peer reviews and refactoring.
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Describe your experience with implementing CI/CD pipelines and test automation.
Highlight specific pipelines you’ve implemented in tools like Jenkins, as well as successes in test automation. Discuss how these improved efficiency through faster releases, reduced errors, and more time focused on coding over deployments. Express eagerness to implement these workflows.
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When dealing with high-traffic applications, what security and reliability best practices do you implement?
AppLovin wants engineers well-versed in strategies like encryption, access controls, load balancing, auto-scaling, and regular security audits. Discuss your commitment to industry best practices for secure, reliable high-traffic apps. Mention any relevant certifications.
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What key factors do you consider when selecting native vs hybrid frameworks for mobile development?
Compare pros and cons like performance, development costs, and user experience. Native apps provide smoother UX but require more development time and resources versus hybrid apps. Align your decision-making to project goals, audience needs, and other requirements.
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How do you balance business goals and customer needs when prioritizing product features?
Showcase your ability to make informed product decisions based on ROI, resources, and user feedback. Discuss using techniques like RICE and MoSCoW prioritization frameworks. Emphasize being flexible to incorporate testing results and customer feedback.
Analytics & Marketing Interview Questions
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Describe your experience with analytics tools and how you’ve used data to drive growth.
Highlight tools like Google Analytics and specific instances where you analyzed data to uncover issues and opportunities. Discuss quantifiable results achieved through your data-driven solutions and optimizations. Express eagerness to learn new analytics tools.
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What metrics would you track to measure the success of an app redesign focused on user engagement?
User engagement metrics like DAU/MAU, session length, retention rate, and churn rate provide quantitative insights into design impact. Discuss supplementing with qualitative feedback through surveys, interviews, and usability testing to understand user perceptions.
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Share strategies you would use to build partnerships and expand business opportunities.
Discuss how you identify mutually beneficial partnerships aligned to company goals. Share experiences growing partnerships through consistent communication, identifying upsell opportunities, and articulating value. Emphasize result-driven relationship building focused on trust and mutual growth.
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How would you utilize A/B testing to improve user engagement in a mobile app?
Share specific examples of designing, implementing, and analyzing A/B tests to optimize user flows. Discuss statistical significance testing used to validate if design changes had measurable positive impact on engagement.
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What techniques would you use to acquire new app users across different channels and markets?
Showcase growth hacking strategies across channels like social media, paid marketing, SEO, influencers, and press coverage. Discuss how you’d research target users and tailor messaging for each channel and locale. Mention tools to support multi-channel campaigns at scale.
Product Design Interview Questions
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What factors do you consider when designing an engaging user onboarding flow for an app?
Discuss researching user motivations and minimizing friction during onboarding. Share strategies like progressive disclosure, interactive tutorials, personalized content, and reinforcing value propositions.
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How would you conduct usability testing to improve an app’s user experience?
Share approaches to effective usability testing like identifying goals, selecting representative users, crafting realistic scenarios, observing interactions, and soliciting feedback. Emphasize gathering both qualitative and quantitative data to uncover usability issues.
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Describe your approach to designing an in-app purchasing flow optimized for conversion.
Focus on strategies like clearly communicating value, keeping flows simple, showing scarcity or social proof, and offering bundle deals. Discuss using funnel analysis to identify and eliminate drop-off points.
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What principles guide your approach to creating intuitive navigation and information architecture in an app?
Share principles like clarity, consistency, prioritizing key tasks, and progressive disclosure. Discuss research, card sorting, user flows, and information architecture best practices like grouping related content.
Strategy & Leadership Interview Questions
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How would you propose we improve our monetization strategy across our portfolio of apps?
Demonstrate strategic thinking by analyzing current monetization approaches against industry benchmarks, competitor tactics, and customer insights. Suggest ways to optimize advertising, subscriptions, in-app purchases, etc. based on these inputs.
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If you were leading a project to scale our apps to a global audience, what considerations would guide your approach?
Discuss researching localization nuances, translating content, tailoring UX for new markets, etc. Share strategies to balance customization with development costs and timelines. Emphasize adaptable but consistent user experiences across markets.
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Imagine you are building a new app development team from scratch. What factors guide your hiring decisions and team building approach?
Share principles for building high-performing teams like complementary skill sets, diversity, and cultural add. Discuss your approach to role definitions, hiring, onboarding,motivating individuals, and aligning teams to company values and objectives.
Preparing thoughtful, thorough responses to questions like these will showcase your qualifications for roles at AppLovin. While technical expertise is critical, also express strategic thinking, analytical skills, creativity, and communication abilities relevant to the position. With practice and research into AppLovin’s products and culture, you can ace your upcoming interview. Best of luck!
SQL Question 6: Average Duration Per User
As an analyst at AppLovin, you are tasked with analyzing user behavior for different mobile apps. The information in the table can be used to find out how long a user spends on each app every day on average (in minutes).
| interaction_id | user_id | app_id | interaction_date | duration(min) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1372 | 456 | 108 | 06/08/2022 00:00:00 | 12 |
| 3215 | 456 | 108 | 06/08/2022 00:00:00 | 24 |
| 3875 | 789 | 208 | 06/10/2022 00:00:00 | 35 |
| 4561 | 456 | 108 | 06/10/2022 00:00:00 | 12 |
| 8962 | 789 | 208 | 07/26/2022 00:00:00 | 42 |
This query first groups the interactions by , , and the date of interaction. It then calculates the average duration per group. The function is used to extract date from the column to eliminate the time portion. This gives us the average amount of time each user spends on each app each day. The results are then ordered by user_id, app_id, and interaction date.
To practice a very similar question try this interactive Snapchat Sending vs. Opening Snaps Question, which is similar for figuring out how long someone spent on an app, or this Twitter Histogram of Tweets Question, which is similar for figuring out how people use a platform.
SQL Question 5: What’s a constraint in SQL, and do you have any examples?
SQL constraints are used to specify rules for the data in a table. They can be used on one or more fields in a table when the table is first created or after it has been created using the ALTER TABLE command.
For example, say you had a database that stores ad campaign data from AppLovins Google Analytics account.
Heres what some constraints could look like:
