I applied online. The process took 5 days. I interviewed at IBM (Bengaluru) in Apr 2025
Interview
It was moderate for a 4-year DBA—you need to cover all the basics and multiple technologies, such as MS SQL/ Oracle/Mongodb.
Cloud technology is mandatory for most jobs, and both Azure and AWS would be great for your career.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Q. What is TUF(Transaction undo file)?
Q.AAG - inner concepts
Q. Azure sql db vs azure sql managed instance
scenario-based:
Q. Fix High CPU
Q. unable to log in forthe user and has all the required permissions
Q. DB went to suspect state ?
Q. Tempdb collation - we use CMD to connect to the server
Q Best recommendations for tempdb
Q. Give me some DMV lists and uses?
Q Definition - clustered index - wrong
Q. What is a Heap index - No clustered index and few non-CI.
Q. How do you fix a slow database issue? Jobs are running slower than expected
Q. log shipping - Def.
Q. Logspace issue - shrink, take a backup, create a new log file for a temporary purpose, go to properties, and increase the size.
Q. Failover types
Q. Synchronous and Asynchronous commit in AAG.
Q. Performance tuning for an long-running query
Q. Lazy writer and checkpoint
Q. Fix -Orphan user
Q. TDE?(Transparent data encryption)
Q. What is are difference between any two SQL servers (From 2016 to 2019 or 2019 to 2022)
The interview process at IBM
was smooth and straightforward. The technical discussion mainly focused on SQL join queries between two tables, along with a general conversation about AI and Generative AI concepts. The interviewers were friendly, and the overall difficulty level of the round was easy to moderate.
I applied online without referrals
First OA with 2 coding questions, medium to hard level, 1 hour time limit
Then 5 online recorded behavior questions, only 1 try, no retries
Next round is meeting the hiring manager and a senior engineer in the team
The online test interview process was well structured and user friendly. Instructions were clear, questions relevant, and platform stable. Timed sections assessed skills effectively, providing fair evaluation and experience overall.
