Most asked top Interview Questions and Answers & Online Test
Education platform for interview prep, online tests, tutorials, and live practice

Build skills with focused learning paths, mock tests, and interview-ready content.

WithoutBook brings subject-wise interview questions, online practice tests, tutorials, and comparison guides into one responsive learning workspace.

Prepare Interview

Mock Exams

Make Homepage

Bookmark this page

Subscribe Email Address
Home / Interview Subjects / PySpark
WithoutBook LIVE Mock Interviews PySpark Related interview subjects: 13

Interview Questions and Answers

Know the top PySpark interview questions and answers for freshers and experienced candidates to prepare for job interviews.

Total 30 questions Interview Questions and Answers

The Best LIVE Mock Interview - You should go through before interview

Know the top PySpark interview questions and answers for freshers and experienced candidates to prepare for job interviews.

Interview Questions and Answers

Search a question to view the answer.

Intermediate / 1 to 5 years experienced level questions & answers

Ques 1

Explain the concept of Resilient Distributed Datasets (RDD) in PySpark.

RDD is the fundamental data structure in PySpark, representing an immutable distributed collection of objects. It allows parallel processing and fault tolerance.

Example:

data = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
rdd = spark.sparkContext.parallelize(data)
Save For Revision

Save For Revision

Bookmark this item, mark it difficult, or place it in a revision set.

Open My Learning Library
Is it helpful?
Add Comment View Comments
Ques 2

What is the difference between a DataFrame and an RDD in PySpark?

DataFrame is a higher-level abstraction on top of RDD, providing a structured and tabular representation of data. It supports various optimizations and operations similar to SQL.

Example:

df = spark.createDataFrame([(1, 'John'), (2, 'Jane')], ['ID', 'Name'])
Save For Revision

Save For Revision

Bookmark this item, mark it difficult, or place it in a revision set.

Open My Learning Library
Is it helpful?
Add Comment View Comments
Ques 3

What is the purpose of the 'cache' operation in PySpark?

The 'cache' operation is used to persist a DataFrame or RDD in memory, enhancing the performance of iterative algorithms or repeated operations.

Example:

df.cache()
Save For Revision

Save For Revision

Bookmark this item, mark it difficult, or place it in a revision set.

Open My Learning Library
Is it helpful?
Add Comment View Comments
Ques 5

What is the purpose of the 'explode' function in PySpark?

The 'explode' function is used to transform a column with arrays or maps into multiple rows, duplicating the values of the other columns.

Example:

from pyspark.sql.functions import explode

exploded_df = df.select('ID', explode('items').alias('item'))
Save For Revision

Save For Revision

Bookmark this item, mark it difficult, or place it in a revision set.

Open My Learning Library
Is it helpful?
Add Comment View Comments
Ques 6

Explain the purpose of the 'persist' operation in PySpark.

'Persist' is used to persist a DataFrame or RDD in memory or on disk, allowing faster access to the data in subsequent operations.

Example:

df.persist()
Save For Revision

Save For Revision

Bookmark this item, mark it difficult, or place it in a revision set.

Open My Learning Library
Is it helpful?
Add Comment View Comments
Ques 7

What is the purpose of the 'explode' function in PySpark?

The 'explode' function is used to transform a column with arrays or maps into multiple rows, duplicating the values of the other columns.

Example:

from pyspark.sql.functions import explode

exploded_df = df.select('ID', explode('items').alias('item'))
Save For Revision

Save For Revision

Bookmark this item, mark it difficult, or place it in a revision set.

Open My Learning Library
Is it helpful?
Add Comment View Comments
Ques 9

Explain the difference between 'cache' and 'persist' operations in PySpark.

'Cache' is a shorthand for 'persist(memory_only=True)', while 'persist' allows more flexibility by specifying storage levels (memory-only, disk-only, etc.).

Example:

df.cache()
Save For Revision

Save For Revision

Bookmark this item, mark it difficult, or place it in a revision set.

Open My Learning Library
Is it helpful?
Add Comment View Comments
Ques 10

What is the purpose of the 'agg' method in PySpark?

The 'agg' method is used for aggregating data in a PySpark DataFrame. It allows you to perform various aggregate functions like sum, avg, max, min, etc., on specified columns.

Example:

result = df.agg({'Sales': 'sum', 'Quantity': 'avg'})
Save For Revision

Save For Revision

Bookmark this item, mark it difficult, or place it in a revision set.

Open My Learning Library
Is it helpful?
Add Comment View Comments
Ques 11

Explain the purpose of the 'coalesce' method in PySpark.

The 'coalesce' method is used to reduce the number of partitions in a PySpark DataFrame. It helps in optimizing the performance when the number of partitions is unnecessarily large.

Example:

df_coalesced = df.coalesce(5)
Save For Revision

Save For Revision

Bookmark this item, mark it difficult, or place it in a revision set.

Open My Learning Library
Is it helpful?
Add Comment View Comments

Most helpful rated by users:

Copyright © 2026, WithoutBook.