Homedepot

Large Enterprises

The Home Depot is the largest home improvement retailer in the United States, selling tools, construction products, appliances, and related services. It operates thousands of stores across North America and is known for serving both DIY consumers and professional contractors.

3 interview notes · updated Jul 2026

Homedepot·Software Engineer·Technical Phone Screen

Jul 2026

Home Depot product analyst interview with a SQL debugging question centered on mulch sales during promotions. The schema was realistic and the bug was subtle enough that I second-guessed myself a few times before landing on the actual issue.

A query joining sales, sale items, products, and promotions is returning far fewer rows than expected for mulch sales over the last 30 days. Why is it dropping rows, and what is the root cause?
Walk through a step-by-step approach to debug which join or filter is causing unexpected row loss in a multi-table SQL query.
Rewrite the buggy query so it correctly returns total mulch units, total mulch revenue, and promo mulch units for each day in the last 30 days, including days with no active promotion.

“The bug is that the WHERE clause filters on p.discount_pct > 0, which kills the LEFT JOIN.”

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Homedepot·Data Analyst·Technical Phone Screen

May 2026

SQL debugging round for a Data Analyst role at Home Depot. One meaty question about a broken retail analytics query, lots of edge cases baked in, and I definitely didn't catch all of them on the first pass.

You're given a SQL query that's supposed to return daily promo sales for mulch products during a specific promotion window, but it's returning far fewer rows than expected. Walk through why the joins are broken and rewrite it correctly, including support for both store-specific and national promotions.

“This one took me a minute to untangle.”

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Homedepot·Data Analyst·Technical Phone Screen

Apr 2026

Home Depot data analyst case interview centered entirely on a mulch promotion that was losing money at the item level. Four questions, all connected, all requiring you to think beyond the obvious margin math. It was a solid case but I left feeling like I could've pushed harder on the causal inference piece.

Should the retailer continue a seasonal mulch promotion that has a negative item-level contribution margin, with six weeks left in the spring season?
What metrics would you use to evaluate the promotion, and why is looking at item-level margin alone not enough to make the decision?
How would you estimate the true incremental impact of the promotion rather than just using the raw observed sales increase?
If leadership decides to keep running the promotion despite the negative item margin, what business justifications could support that decision?

“My instinct was to say no immediately because the math is obviously bad at the item level.”

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