Career Specific DSA problems

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DSA CAREER SPECIFIC

Leetcode provides top interview questions but no one is providing career specific coding problems. With this post, I am planning to provide career specific DSA prep so that your coding preparation is as specific as possible. This post covers following careers :

1. Data Scientist

2. Data Engineering

3. Data Analyst

4. Product Manager

5. Software Development

I’ll work on more in the future.

Important DSA Interview Concepts Career Specific .

Data Analyst :

Very less chance of being asked coding problems. The emphasis is on SQL more than DSA. Yet, knowing DSA is a very good to have. Sharing basic concepts you should know for Data Analyst :

1. Arrays and Hashing

2. Two Pointers

3. Stack

4. Intervals

5. Math and Geometry

6. Sliding Window (only easy)

Product Manager :

Even product managers aren’t exempt from coding problems especially for technical product manager roles. However, the problems they are asked are very basic.

1. Arrays and Hashing

2. Two Pointers

3. Stack

4. Sliding Window (easy)

Data Engineering :

This does require advanced coding and ability to solve medium and even hard problems. While preparation is almost on similar level for Software Engineering, its slightly easier.

1. Arrays and Hashing

2. Two Pointers

3. Sliding window

4. Stack

5. Binary Search

6. Linked List

7. Trees (medium level)

8. Backtracking (medium level)

9. Graphs (medium level)

10. 1D Dynamic Programming (medium level)

11. Greedy

12. Intervals

13. Math and Geometry

14. Bit Manipulation.

Software Engineering :

All the concepts for DSA are applicable here.

DSA Problems to solve

Data Analyst and Product Managers

1. Contains Duplicate

2. Valid Anagram

3. Two sum

4. Valid Palindrome

5. Best time to buy and sell stock

6. Valid Parenthesis

7. Meeting Rooms

8. Insert Interval

9. Merge Interval.

Data Science :

Array and String

2D Array Manipulation

1. Spiral Matrix

2. Set Matrix Zeroes

3. Rotate Image

4. Product of Array Except Self

5. 3Sum

6. 4Sum

7. Subarray Sum Equals K

8. Continuous Subarray Sum

Sliding Window

1. Longest Substring Without Repeating Characters

2. Permutation in String

3. Minimum Size Subarray Sum

4. Longest Repeating Character Replacement

5. Max Consecutive Ones III

Matrix Problems

1. Number of Islands

2. Word Search

3. 01 Matrix

4. Rotting Oranges

5. Pacific Atlantic Water Flow

Hashing

Hash Map/Set

1. Longest Consecutive Sequence

2. Insert Delete GetRandom O(1)

3. Find the Duplicate Number

4. Group Anagrams

5. Top K Frequent Elements

Dynamic Programming

1D DP

1. Decode Ways

2. House Robber

3. House Robber II

4. Unique Paths

5. Longest Increasing Subsequence

6. Longest Common Subsequence

2D DP

1. Unique Paths II

2. Maximal Square

3. Minimum Path Sum

4. Edit Distance

5. Partition Equal Subset Sum

String DP

1. Longest Palindromic Substring

2. Interleaving String

3. Word Break

4. Word Break II

5. Minimum Insertion Steps to Make a String Palindrome

Graph

Graph Traversal (DFS/BFS)

1. Subsets

2. Subsets II

3. Number of Provinces

4. All Paths From Source to Target

5. Clone Graph

6. Word Ladder

Graph Algorithms

1. Course Schedule

2. Course Schedule II

3. Reconstruct Itinerary

4. Number of Connected Components in an Undirected Graph (Premium)

5. Evaluate Division

Binary Search

1. Find First and Last Position of Element in Sorted Array

2. Find Minimum in Rotated Sorted Array

3. Find Peak Element

4. Search in Rotated Sorted Array

5. Search a 2D Matrix II

Tree and Binary Search Tree

Tree Traversal

1. Binary Tree Inorder Traversal

2. Validate Binary Search Tree

3. Binary Tree Level Order Traversal

4. Binary Tree Zigzag Level Order Traversal

5. Construct Binary Tree from Preorder and Inorder Traversal

Binary Search Tree

1. Binary Search Tree Iterator

2. Kth Smallest Element in a BST

3. Convert Sorted Array to Binary Search Tree

4. Lowest Common Ancestor of a Binary Tree

Linked List

Linked List Manipulation

1. Remove Nth Node From End of List

2. Remove Duplicates from Sorted List II

3. Partition List

4. Copy List with Random Pointer

5. Reverse Linked List II

Backtracking

Classic Problems

1. Permutations

2. Permutations II

3. Combinations

4. Palindrome Partitioning

5. Subsets

Grid-Based Backtracking

1. Word Search

2. Word Search II

DATA ENGINEER

Easy Problems

• Start with these easy problems to build a strong foundation. They focus on basic operations and simple algorithms.

1. Two Sum

2. Reverse Linked List

3. Palindrome Number

4. Valid Parentheses

5. Merge Two Sorted Lists

6. Best Time to Buy and Sell Stock

7. Climbing Stairs

8. Maximum Subarray

9. Same Tree

10. Symmetric Tree

11. Binary Tree Inorder Traversal

Medium Problems

• Once you’re comfortable with the basics, move on to these medium problems. They require a better understanding of algorithms and data structures.

1. Add Two Numbers

2. Longest Substring Without Repeating Characters

3. Longest Palindromic Substring

4. Container With Most Water

5. 3Sum

6. Letter Combinations of a Phone Number

7. Remove Nth Node From End of List

8. Valid Sudoku

9. Group Anagrams

10. Merge Intervals

Hard Problems

• For a real challenge, try these hard problems. They test your knowledge of advanced algorithms and data structures, similar to what you'll face in real-world scenarios.

1. Median of Two Sorted Arrays

2. Reverse Nodes in k-Group

3. Trapping Rain Water

4. Edit Distance

5. First Missing Positive

6. Word Ladder

7. Longest Consecutive Sequence

8. Word Search II

9. Binary Tree Maximum Path Sum

10. LFU Cache

Along with this Neetcode 150 is a must and you can skip hard problems for DP, trees , Tries and Graphs

Software Engineers

I always recommend starting with Blind 75 for software engineers but the best preparation is Neetcode 250 which covers top interview questions.

Array

• Two Sum

• Best Time to Buy and Sell Stock

• Contains Duplicate

• Product of Array Except Self

• Maximum Subarray

• Maximum Product Subarray

• Find Minimum in Rotated Sorted Array

• Search in Rotated Sorted Array

• 3Sum

• Container With Most Water

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Binary

• Sum of Two Integers

• Number of 1 Bits

• Counting Bits

• Missing Number

• Reverse Bits

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Dynamic Programming

• Climbing Stairs

• Coin Change

• Longest Increasing Subsequence

• Longest Common Subsequence

• Word Break Problem

• Combination Sum

• House Robber

• House Robber II

• Decode Ways

• Unique Paths

• Jump Game

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Graph

• Clone Graph

• Course Schedule

• Pacific Atlantic Water Flow

• Number of Islands

• Longest Consecutive Sequence

• Alien Dictionary (Leetcode Premium)

• Graph Valid Tree (Leetcode Premium)

• Number of Connected Components in an Undirected Graph (Leetcode Premium)

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Interval

• Insert Interval

• Merge Intervals

• Non-overlapping Intervals

• Meeting Rooms (Leetcode Premium)

• Meeting Rooms II (Leetcode Premium)

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Linked List

• Reverse a Linked List

• Detect Cycle in a Linked List

• Merge Two Sorted Lists

• Merge K Sorted Lists

• Remove Nth Node From End Of List

• Reorder List

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Matrix

• Set Matrix Zeroes

• Spiral Matrix

• Rotate Image

• Word Search

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String

• Longest Substring Without Repeating Characters

• Longest Repeating Character Replacement

• Minimum Window Substring

• Valid Anagram

• Group Anagrams

• Valid Parentheses

• Valid Palindrome

• Longest Palindromic Substring

• Palindromic Substrings

• Encode and Decode Strings (Leetcode Premium)

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Tree

• Maximum Depth of Binary Tree

• Same Tree

• Invert/Flip Binary Tree

• Binary Tree Maximum Path Sum

• Binary Tree Level Order Traversal

• Serialize and Deserialize Binary Tree

• Subtree of Another Tree

• Construct Binary Tree from Preorder and Inorder Traversal

• Validate Binary Search Tree

• Kth Smallest Element in a BST

• Lowest Common Ancestor of BST

• Implement Trie (Prefix Tree)

• Add and Search Word

• Word Search II

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Heap

• Merge K Sorted Lists

• Top K Frequent Elements

• Find Median from Data Stream