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.
EasyTechnical
0 practiced
Explain pagination strategies for APIs you design: offset-based, cursor-based (seek), and keyset pagination. As a Solutions Architect, describe pros/cons, performance implications for large datasets, and guidance you would give clients on when to choose each approach and how to include stable sorting keys.
EasyTechnical
0 practiced
Design a minimal webhook receiver contract for third-party clients that includes retry semantics, idempotency guidance, and payload signing. Provide the JSON payload skeleton, headers to include (e.g., X-Signature, X-Retry-Count), and a recommended exponential backoff policy. As a Solutions Architect, justify choices for security and reliability.
MediumTechnical
0 practiced
Provide a checklist of non-breaking changes and breaking changes for REST APIs. For non-breaking changes, include examples (adding optional fields, extending enums with fallbacks). For breaking changes, include removal of fields, renaming, or changing semantics. As a Solutions Architect, explain how to validate potential changes against consumers.
MediumTechnical
0 practiced
Design a testing strategy to prevent API contract regressions across teams: include unit tests, contract tests, integration tests, and end-to-end smoke tests. As a Solutions Architect, recommend CI pipeline stages, gating policies, and automation for detecting breaking changes before they reach production.
EasyTechnical
0 practiced
Design a simple status code policy for HTTP APIs used by your clients. As a Solutions Architect, list recommended uses of 2xx, 3xx, 4xx, and 5xx status codes and describe when to return 202 vs 200 for async operations and 409 vs 422 for conflict/validation. Include how to include machine-readable error payloads and correlation IDs for tracing.
Unlock Full Question Bank
Get access to hundreds of Service Communication and API Design interview questions and detailed answers.
Sign in to ContinueJoin thousands of developers preparing for their dream job.