InterviewStack.io LogoInterviewStack.io

Service Communication and API Design Questions

Design and specify APIs and interservice communication patterns for systems that must scale. Topics include REST design and best practices, API versioning and deprecation strategies, backward compatibility and API evolution, contract design between services, choosing protocols such as gRPC versus HTTP for internal or external communication, security and authentication patterns at the API level, performance and scalability considerations, observability and monitoring of service interactions, and strategies for evolving interfaces without breaking consumers.

MediumTechnical
0 practiced
Describe how to implement contract testing between a frontend consumer and an API provider using Pact or OpenAPI schema validation. Explain CI integration, the verification flow, how to handle provider changes, and sketch a basic consumer test that asserts POST /orders with a given payload is supported by the provider.
HardSystem Design
0 practiced
You need to migrate a monolithic customer API to a microservices architecture while keeping the public API stable. Outline an incremental migration plan using facade/adaptor patterns, API gateway strategies, contract tests, and ways to route certain endpoints to new services while others remain on the monolith.
EasyTechnical
0 practiced
What are the essential elements of API documentation and how does OpenAPI (Swagger) help automate SDK generation, request validation, and contract enforcement? Describe how you would author an OpenAPI fragment for POST /orders that returns 201 with a Location header pointing to the created resource.
MediumSystem Design
0 practiced
You are responsible for API versioning for a product used by many enterprise customers. Design a versioning and deprecation strategy that covers semantic versioning, backward compatibility guarantees, deprecation windows, communicating changes to clients, and automation you would build to reduce breakage during major version moves.
EasyTechnical
0 practiced
List best practices for designing error responses in REST APIs. Include example HTTP status codes for common errors, recommended response body fields (for human and machine consumption), and explain how to design errors to enable client retries, diagnostics, and localization.

Unlock Full Question Bank

Get access to hundreds of Service Communication and API Design interview questions and detailed answers.

Sign in to Continue

Join thousands of developers preparing for their dream job.