Technical Foundation and Self Assessment Questions

Covers baseline technical knowledge and the candidate's ability to honestly assess and communicate their technical strengths and weaknesses. Topics include fundamental infrastructure and networking concepts, operating system and protocol basics, core development and platform concepts relevant to the role, and the candidate's candid self evaluation of their depth in specific technologies. Interviewers use this to calibrate how technical the candidate is expected to be, identify areas for growth, and ensure alignment of expectations between product and engineering for collaboration.

MediumTechnical

41 practiced

Write a Python function calculate_requirements(requests_per_second, avg_payload_bytes, retention_days, compression_ratio=1.0, overhead_factor=1.0) that returns estimated storage_gb and average_outbound_gbps. Assume continuous uniform traffic where each request produces a single payload stored; include an example input and expected output and explain your assumptions.

MediumSystem Design

47 practiced

Design a high-level architecture diagram (describe components and interactions) for a stateless web application that must support autoscaling, session continuity across deployments, and zero-downtime blue-green deployment. Include load balancing, session handling approach, CI/CD considerations, and a safe database migration strategy.

HardTechnical

38 practiced

Design a benchmarking plan to compare PostgreSQL and CockroachDB for a transactional e-commerce workload. Define workload generator behavior, dataset size and schema, isolation levels to test, failure scenarios to inject, metrics to collect (throughput, p99 latency, consistency anomalies), and how you would present and interpret results for stakeholders.

HardSystem Design

44 practiced

Design an architecture for an IoT fleet where devices have limited CPU, intermittent connectivity, and local sensors requiring low-latency decisions. Include secure device identity, over-the-air (OTA) update mechanisms with staged rollouts and rollback, data synchronization patterns for intermittent connectivity, and strategies to ensure reliability and security on constrained hardware.

HardTechnical

44 practiced

A customer with a large monolithic codebase asks how to migrate to microservices without disrupting revenue-critical flows. Propose a phased migration plan including the strangler pattern, data migration strategy, API compatibility approaches, testing strategy, and risk mitigation steps you would present to leadership.

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