Cassandra Developers Hiring Guide

Open-Source Data Management

Introduced in 2008 by Facebook, Apache Cassandra is a widely-used, highly popular data management tool. Huge businesses, including a number of Fortune 500 companies, look to the open-source database system to accommodate, transfer, and manage large amounts of data every day. GrubHub, Instagram, Reddit, Instacart, Netflix, Uber, Spotify, Walmart, Target, Cox Communications, and, of course, Facebook are just some of those big names.

As businesses grow and generate greater and greater amounts of data, they are increasingly turning to Cassandra as a solution for handling this abundance of information. With that comes the need for a talented developer who can build and incorporate Cassandra solutions into their fold.

Hiring Guide
Interview Questions
Job Description

What is Cassandra?

Once upon a time, developers at Facebook were struggling to keep their services running without interruption while scaling as they generated more and more data. This was when the idea for Cassandra was born. Today, the NoSQL distributed database serves as a scalable, high-performance solution that enables companies to manage their data while concurrently keeping their services and products available to their audiences.

Cassandra is written in Java. It’s widely available and can run in many different locations and areas across the globe, along with a diverse range of environments, including cloud environments and data centers.

How popular is Cassandra?

A relatively new technology, Cassandra has gained enormous popularity in recent years, outpacing that of many of its peers. The platform itself has grown along with its capabilities, leading to many companies choosing to include it in their stacks. As of July 2021, Cassandra ranks 10th in DB Engines, a list of the popularity rankings of database management systems.

Cassandra is widely used in a range of industries, particularly those that manage and process huge amounts of data, such as information technology, healthcare, finance and banking, education, retail, and many others. It’s found around the world, from the U.S. to Australia to Argentina to India.

Describe the main features of Cassandra:

Cassandra is ideal for applications and programs that must retain their data while running concurrently, without suffering from outages. Some of the main features and benefits of using the data management tool are:

Auto-logging
Synchronous and asynchronous replication options
Data distribution
Distributed architecture
Fault tolerance
Low latency
Replication support
Reliability
Scalability
Stability and consistency

Additionally, Cassandra has its own query language, called Cassandra Query Language or CQL, which supports the data management system.

What do we mean by NoSQL?

NoSQL — an acronym of Not only SQL — usually indicates that you are working with a non-relational database. These kinds of databases are means of storing and accessing data in multiple formats or types, those that aren’t necessarily presented in table form. The 4 main types of NoSQL databases are:

Document store
Graph store
Key-value store
Wide-column store

These databases are scalable and able to accommodate multiple data loads, along with different types of information. Cassandra is an example of a NoSQL database management tool.

What query language does Cassandra use?

Cassandra has its own query language, called Cassandra Query Language or CQL. This is the predominant way a developer can interact and communicate with a Cassandra database. Similar to SQL in structure, it presents an alternative to the more established query language.

What separates Cassandra from other NoSQL database solutions?

Cassandra is one of the most popular NoSQL database solutions and with good reason. For one, nodes are critical to the process of scaling — it increasingly adds nodes such that it is able to run without a master and experience no downtime or failures. Therefore, it’s a high-performance solution.

Moreover, data that originates on a node in a given location can be accessed by a node in a different location via Cassandra’s network of distributed devices. Additionally, Cassandra is a wide column store, in which the formats of the columns can be different within the same table.

Describe the components of Cassandra:

The main components of Cassandra are:

Nodes that store data and are able to accept requests from any data location
Data centers that store related nodes
Clusters that store data centers

Other components are:

SSTables, or sorted string tables
Commit logs
CQL tables
Memtables
Bloom filters

We are looking for a Java developer to work with Cassandra database management systems. In your role, you will use Java and other languages and technologies to build secure databases and data networks, as well as scale and improve existing ones.

Responsibilities

Design and develop scalable data architecture
Monitor Cassandra solutions’ performance and analytics
Code scripts
Scale existing data management systems
Clean data
Handle upgrades and repairs as needed
Work with stakeholders to define and research key requirements
Collaborate with other developers and team members to ensure precision and quality

Skills And Qualifications

At least 4 years of experience with Apache Cassandra, including design, development, performance optimization, and implementation
At least 7 years of experience with Java
Knowledge of Cassandra architecture
Knowledge of Cassandra Query Language (CQL)
Table design experience
Experience in Kafka development
Experience with Linux and Unix
Experience with C language
Experience working with schema
Proven ability to monitor systems
Knowledge of tuning
Ability to manage large projects
Extensive NoSQL experience
Experience with index and search programs and tools
Experience with Cassandra clusters
Experience working in an agile environment
Data-processing and data-loading skills
Superior problem-solving, analytical, and written and verbal communication skills
Bachelor’s degree in computer science or a related discipline