diff --git a/mllib/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/ml/feature/Imputer.scala b/mllib/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/ml/feature/Imputer.scala
index f8865c083a23b..7e2c53e194359 100644
--- a/mllib/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/ml/feature/Imputer.scala
+++ b/mllib/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/ml/feature/Imputer.scala
@@ -176,18 +176,20 @@ class Imputer @Since("2.2.0") (@Since("2.2.0") override val uid: String)
           .map(_.headOption.getOrElse(Double.NaN))
 
       case Imputer.mode =>
-        // Keep in line with sklearn.impute.SimpleImputer (using scipy.stats.mode).
-        // If there is more than one mode, choose the smallest one.
-        val modes = dataset.select(cols: _*).rdd.flatMap { row =>
+        import spark.implicits._
+        // If there is more than one mode, choose the smallest one to keep in line
+        // with sklearn.impute.SimpleImputer (using scipy.stats.mode).
+        val modes = dataset.select(cols: _*).flatMap { row =>
           Iterator.range(0, numCols).flatMap { i =>
             // Ignore null.
-            if (row.isNullAt(i)) Iterator.empty else Iterator.single((i, row.getDouble(i)), 1L)
+            // negative value to apply the default ranking of [Long, Double]
+            if (row.isNullAt(i)) Iterator.empty else Iterator.single((i, -row.getDouble(i)))
           }
-        }.reduceByKey(_ + _).map { case ((i, v), c) =>
-          // negative value to apply the default ranking of [Long, Double]
-          (i, (c, -v))
-        }.reduceByKey(Ordering.apply[(Long, Double)].max
-        ).mapValues(-_._2).collectAsMap()
+        }.toDF("index", "negative_value")
+         .groupBy("index", "negative_value").agg(count(lit(0)).as("count"))
+         .groupBy("index").agg(max(struct("count", "negative_value")).as("mode"))
+         .select(col("index"), negate(col("mode.negative_value")))
+         .as[(Int, Double)].collect().toMap
         Array.tabulate(numCols)(i => modes.getOrElse(i, Double.NaN))
     }