Practo Senior MLE / Data Scientist Interview Guide
Practo runs doctor-discovery, telehealth, and clinical-documentation analytics. Senior MLE / DS roles cover doctor recommendation, appointment matching, prescription processing (OCR + NER), and clinical analytics. The interview tests healthcare ML judgment alongside ranking depth. This guide covers it.
Practo is one of India's leading health-tech platforms, operating across doctor discovery, telehealth, diagnostics, and electronic health records. Senior MLE / DS roles cover doctor recommendation, search ranking, appointment matching, clinical NLP (prescription parsing, symptom understanding), and patient-side analytics.
The loop structure (Senior MLE / DS)
Standard loop: recruiter screen → ML / SQL → ML system design → behavioural.
Round-by-round breakdown
Round 1 — Recruiter screen. 30 min.
Round 2 — ML / SQL. 75 minutes. Standard ML rigour with healthcare flavor. SQL on healthcare schema.
Round 3 — ML system design. 75 minutes. "Design doctor recommendation across specialties" or "design prescription OCR + NER pipeline."
Round 4 — Behavioural. 45 minutes. Healthcare ethics emphasis.
What Practo weights distinctively
1. Healthcare correctness. A wrong recommendation can hurt a patient. Senior MLEs build safety-aware. 2. Doctor-patient marketplace dynamics. Both sides matter for recommendation; doctor utilization affects user wait times. 3. Clinical NLP. Prescription processing (OCR + drug-name NER) is a unique technical area. 4. Regulation. Health data laws (DPDP), telehealth guidelines.
Top 10 questions Practo senior MLE / DS candidates face
1. "Design doctor recommendation: what's the objective and what are the safety constraints?" 2. "Prescription OCR + NER pipeline — architecture?" 3. "Symptom-to-specialty routing — how do you build this safely?" 4. "Calibration in fraud / abuse detection for healthcare. Why does it matter?" 5. "Doctor-patient matching — supply-demand mechanics?" 6. "Diagnose: appointment-booking rate dropped 10%. Approach?" 7. "Image-based skin condition triage — what's the ML role and what's the human role?" 8. "Class imbalance in disease detection — handling?" 9. "DPDP compliance — what data can you use and how?" 10. "When would you NOT deploy an ML model in healthcare?"
The prep path through MSL
Compensation
Practo Senior MLE / DS in 2026 ranges roughly ₹25 lakh – ₹45 lakh for 5-7 YOE. Lead roles ₹60 lakh+.