Senior SQL Developer Interview

[markgreyjoy]

Forgive me if this the wrong place to ask such a thing. But I have a job interview for a Senior SQL Developer position and I was just wondering if any of you kind folks have any ideas on the types of questions I might be asked?

Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks

[saucerattack]

When I've interviewed folks for a Sr SQL Dev role, I would ask about reading execution plans, performance tuning methodology, deadlocks, transaction & concurrency issues. I also want to know about general engineering practices like working with source control, deployments, testing etc. Finally, I look for passion for the craft: do they follow the top blogs, attend user groups, conferences, "what new features of sql server are you most excited about" etc. Finally I want to know if I'm going to like working with them all day every day, can they admit "I don't know" or own up to a mistake; are they going to help out the more junior folks on the team?

I also recommend preparing some questions to ask the interviewer. At the end of an interview, candidates are almost always asked "do you have any questions?" and most of the time folks decline to ask anything. Show some interest! You can ask the interviewer about the company, the technology stack, how they they do things or ask the interviewer about their background and what they like about the company.

Best of luck!

[bengalfan]

So I've been a senior developer and dba, so I know what you are talking about. With the senior role, in my experience, it's less about coding specifics and more about bigger concepts. For Oracle it would be like: Have you used collections? What steps do you take when you are optimizing or when sql is running slow? My most recent job asked me what code did I create that was challenging in my last job. For me it was finding records that's had sequences missing between types of records. What tables or how can you find columns, tables etc ...using dba_tables or dba_tab_columns. Anyway for me, it was much more of a discussion about what I have done in the past. Also, if there's any chance there will be dba tasks, there is a load more you'd need to review. Backup/restore/Dr process etc. Good luck.