Technical Fundamentals & Core Skills Topics
Core technical concepts including algorithms, data structures, statistics, cryptography, and hardware-software integration. Covers foundational knowledge required for technical roles and advanced technical depth.
Problem Solving and Analytical Thinking
Evaluates a candidate's systematic and logical approach to unfamiliar, ambiguous, or complex problems across technical, product, business, security, and operational contexts. Candidates should be able to clarify objectives and constraints, ask effective clarifying questions, decompose problems into smaller components, identify root causes, form and test hypotheses, and enumerate and compare multiple solution options. Interviewers look for clear reasoning about trade offs and edge cases, avoidance of premature conclusions, use of repeatable frameworks or methodologies, prioritization of investigations, design of safe experiments and measurement of outcomes, iteration based on feedback, validation of fixes, documentation of results, and conversion of lessons learned into process improvements. Responses should clearly communicate the thought process, justify choices, surface assumptions and failure modes, and demonstrate learning from prior problem solving experiences.
Cryptography Fundamentals
Core cryptography concepts and how they apply to system and architecture design. Candidates should be able to explain symmetric encryption and asymmetric encryption, cryptographic hash functions, message authentication codes, digital signatures, random number generation and entropy, and the security properties of confidentiality, integrity, and authenticity. Coverage includes key lifecycle and operational practices such as secure key generation, secure storage, distribution, rotation, revocation, destruction, certificate management, and public key infrastructure. Discussion should address algorithm and key length selection trade offs, performance impacts, common implementation pitfalls for cryptographic components, side channel and padding related risks, and safe patterns for password storage and key derivation. Questions probe conceptual design, threat modeling for cryptographic components, and how to select and validate cryptographic approaches for real world systems without requiring code implementation.
Technical Background and Skills
Provide a clear, evidence based overview of your technical foundation and demonstrated credibility as a technical candidate. Describe programming and scripting languages, frameworks and libraries, databases and data stores, version control systems, operating systems such as Linux and Windows, server and hardware experience, and cloud platforms including Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform. Explain experience with infrastructure as code tools, containerization and orchestration platforms, monitoring and observability tooling, and deployment and continuous integration and continuous delivery practices. Discuss development workflows, testing strategies, build and release processes, and tooling you use to maintain quality and velocity. For each area, explain the scale and complexity of the systems you worked on, the architectural patterns and design choices you applied, and the performance and reliability trade offs you considered. Give concrete examples of technical challenges you solved with hands on verification details when appropriate such as game engine or platform specifics, and quantify measurable business impact using metrics such as latency reduction, cost savings, increased throughput, improved uptime, or faster time to market. At senior levels emphasize mastery in three to four core technology areas, the complexity and ownership of systems you managed, the scalability and reliability problems you solved, and examples where you led architecture or major technical decisions. Align your examples to the role and product domain to establish relevance, and be honest about gaps and areas you are actively developing.
Cryptography and Encryption Fundamentals
Comprehensive understanding of modern cryptography and encryption principles used to build secure systems. Candidates should be able to explain the differences between symmetric and asymmetric encryption, appropriate use cases for each, and common algorithms by full name such as Advanced Encryption Standard and Data Encryption Standard for symmetric ciphers and Rivest Shamir Adleman and elliptic curve based algorithms such as Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm and Elliptic Curve Diffie Hellman for public key operations. Describe hybrid encryption patterns in which asymmetric cryptography is used to protect a symmetric session key, and discuss block cipher modes of operation including cipher block chaining and authenticated encryption modes such as Galois Counter Mode, as well as the role of initialization vectors and nonces. Cover hash functions and integrity checks with properties such as collision resistance and preimage resistance, message authentication codes, authenticated encryption, and digital signatures for authentication and nonrepudiation. Include high level Public Key Infrastructure concepts including certificates and certificate authorities and how certificates are used to establish trust, together with foundational Transport Layer Security and Secure Sockets Layer principles without requiring deep certificate lifecycle management knowledge. Emphasize key management and operational concerns including secure key generation, secure storage, rotation and compromise handling, randomness and entropy sources, recommended key lengths and algorithm lifecycle considerations, and performance and scalability trade offs. Be prepared to discuss common implementation pitfalls and failures such as weak key sizes, poor random number generation, improper key reuse, and lack of authenticated encryption, plus threat models and practical applications including encrypting data at rest and in transit, secure channels, and signing and verification. Avoid deep mathematical proofs unless specifically requested, but be ready to reason about practical trade offs, algorithm selection, and secure implementation patterns.