Paypal Interview Questions (13+ Questions)
Last Updated: June 8, 2026 β’ 13 Questions β’ Real Company Interviews
Prepare for your Paypal interview with our comprehensive collection of 13+ real interview questions and detailed answers. These questions have been curated from actual Paypal technical interviews across various roles including DevOps Engineer, Data Engineer, QA Engineer, and more.
Table of Contents
- Diagnosing Linux DNS Configuration (medium) π
- Fix Pod Metadata Access with Downward API (medium) π
- Fix Gateway TLS Certificate Configuration (medium) π
- Secret Enforcement and Validation (medium) π
- Cross-repo Promotion via Artifacts (medium) π
- Scrape Multi-Page E-commerce Data with BeautifulSoup (medium)
- Replace Keywords in Social Media Post Text (easy)
- Product Sales and Inventory Data (medium)
- Retrospective Discount Analysis (medium) π
- Account Balance Calculation (easy)
- Permutations (medium)
- Insert Interval (medium)
- DENSE_RANK for Profit Margin (medium) π
Our Paypal interview questions cover a wide range of technical topics and difficulty levels, from entry-level positions to senior roles. Each question includes detailed explanations and answers to help you understand the concepts and prepare effectively for your interview.
π‘ Pro Tips for Paypal Interviews
- Practice each question and understand the underlying concepts
- Review Paypal's specific technologies and methodologies
- Prepare follow-up questions and edge cases
- Practice explaining your solutions clearly and concisely
Interview Questions & Answers
1. Diagnosing Linux DNS Configuration
Learn how to diagnose DNS resolver configurations across multiple sources on Linux using Bash commands. This guide covers examining /etc/resolv.conf, inspecting systemd-resolved settings, identifying symbolic links, and creating consolidated DNS diagnostics reports, essential for troubleshooting inconsistent domain resolution and split-horizon DNS issues.
2. Fix Pod Metadata Access with Downward API
Fix a crashing Pod by correctly configuring the Downward API to expose pod metadata as files accessible to the container.
3. Fix Gateway TLS Certificate Configuration
Debug Gateway TLS issues: fix OpenSSL certificate generation with SAN, repair invalid secrets, and restore secure HTTPS traffic. Master K8s TLS configuration.
4. Secret Enforcement and Validation
Master GitHub Actions secret management: enforce required secrets, validate presence before deployment, and ensure sensitive values are masked in logs.
5. Cross-repo Promotion via Artifacts
Learn to implement cross-repository artifact sharing in GitHub Actions. Build a pipeline where one repository uploads metadata and another downloads it to trigger deployments using upload-artifact and download-artifact.
6. Scrape Multi-Page E-commerce Data with BeautifulSoup
Scrape product data from an e-commerce website by parsing a product listing page and following links to individual product detail pages to extract and combine information using Python BeautifulSoup.
7. Replace Keywords in Social Media Post Text
SELECT
id,
REPLACE(text, 'Python', 'PySpark') AS text,
date,
likes,
comments,
shares,
platform
FROM {{ ref("social_media") }}
8. Product Sales and Inventory Data
WITH sales_agg AS (
SELECT
product_id,
SUM(quantity) AS total_quantity,
SUM(revenue) AS total_revenue
FROM {{ ref("sales") }}
GROUP BY product_id
),
inventory_agg AS (
SELECT
product_id,
SUM(stock) AS total_stock
FROM {{ ref("inventory") }}
GROUP BY product_id
)
SELECT
p.product_id,
p.name,
p.category,
COALESCE(s.total_quantity, 0) AS total_quantity,
COALESCE(s.total_revenue, 0) AS total_revenue,
COALESCE(i.total_stock, 0) AS total_stock
FROM {{ ref("products") }} p
LEFT JOIN sales_agg s
ON p.product_id = s.product_id
LEFT JOIN inventory_agg i
ON p.product_id = i.product_id
9. Retrospective Discount Analysis
Introduction
Mastering SQL queries is a vital skill for data professionals, and understanding how to extract meaningful insights from relational databases is a common topic in interviews. Below, we will explore an example of how to write an SQL query to determine the average order value for each...
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Detailed explanation and solution available for premium members.
10. Account Balance Calculation
SELECT
account_id,
SUM(
CASE
WHEN transaction_type = 'deposit' THEN amount
WHEN transaction_type = 'withdrawal' THEN - amount
ELSE 0
END
) AS final_balance
FROM
transactions
GROUP BY
account_id
ORDER BY
account_id ASC;
11. Permutations
def permute(nums: list[int]) -> list[list[int]]:
res = []
def dfs(current_perm):
if len(current_perm) == len(nums):
res.append(current_perm.copy())
return
for num in nums:
if num in current_perm:
continue
current_perm.append(num)
dfs(current_perm)
current_perm.pop()
dfs([])
return res
12. Insert Interval
def insert(intervals: list[list[int]], new_interval: list[int]) -> list[list[int]]:
res = []
for i in range(len(intervals)):
if new_interval[1] < intervals[i][0]:
res.append(new_interval)
return res + intervals[i:]
elif new_interval[0] > intervals[i][1]:
res.append(intervals[i])
else:
new_interval = [
min(new_interval[0], intervals[i][0]),
max(new_interval[1], intervals[i][1])
]
res.append(new_interval)
return res
13. DENSE_RANK for Profit Margin
Objective
To solve the given SQL interview question, you need to write a query that calculates and ranks the profit margin percentages for each product. A profit margin percentage is calculated as ((selling_price - cost_price) / cost_price) * 100. The SQL query should retrieve the product name...
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Detailed explanation and solution available for premium members.
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