InterviewStack.io LogoInterviewStack.io

Scalability and Code Organization Questions

Focuses on designing software and codebases that remain maintainable and performant as features and user load grow. Areas include modularity and separation of concerns, component and API boundaries, when and how to refactor, trade offs between monolith and service oriented architectures, data partitioning and caching strategies, performance optimization, testing strategies, dependency management, code review practices, and patterns for maintainability and evolvability. Interview questions may ask candidates to reason about design choices, identify coupling and cohesion issues, and propose practical steps to evolve an existing codebase safely.

EasyTechnical
0 practiced
Explain the concept of a 'bounded context' from Domain-Driven Design. Give an example of how identifying bounded contexts can guide service decomposition in an e-commerce system, and describe one technique to discover boundaries in an existing codebase.
HardTechnical
0 practiced
You need to rename a widely used function (public API) across 100+ repositories with minimal disruption. Propose an automated migration strategy including toolchains (codemods, linters), deprecation window, feature flags if needed, and verification steps to ensure the rename is complete.
HardTechnical
0 practiced
Case study: monitoring shows that adding more instances of a microservice increased average and p95 latency instead of reducing it. Walk through a debugging checklist explaining possible causes (e.g., shared resource contention, DNS/iptables issues, connection pool exhaustion, leader-election thrashing), how you'd gather evidence, and remedial actions for each cause.
EasyTechnical
0 practiced
You maintain a public REST API used by multiple clients and need to evolve endpoints without breaking consumers. Describe a versioning and deprecation strategy, including schema/version formats (e.g., header vs URL), how to communicate changes, and steps to safely deprecate a field or endpoint.
HardTechnical
0 practiced
Design a distributed circuit-breaker component (library API) and describe its behavior in pseudocode. Requirements: per-service and global failure tracking, rolling window error rate calculation, open/half-open/closed states, and how to integrate with distributed tracing. Discuss failure modes, state synchronization, and how to avoid systemic false tripping.

Unlock Full Question Bank

Get access to hundreds of Scalability and Code Organization interview questions and detailed answers.

Sign in to Continue

Join thousands of developers preparing for their dream job.