Question Bank

Tell me about yourself.

Tell me about a time you worked on a team to accomplish a goal.

Describe a time you had to learn something new quickly.

Tell me about a time you received constructive criticism. How did you handle it?

Why are you interested in this role / company?

Describe a time you had to manage multiple priorities or deadlines.

Tell me about a mistake you made and what you learned from it.

Tell me about a time you had a conflict with a coworker. How did you resolve it?

Describe a project where you had to influence others without direct authority.

Tell me about a time you went above and beyond what was expected.

Describe a situation where you had to adapt to a significant change at work.

Tell me about a time you failed to meet a deadline. What happened?

Describe a time you had to make a decision with incomplete information.

Tell me about a time you had to push back on a request from a senior leader.

Describe a time you mentored someone and helped them grow.

Tell me about a strategic decision you made that had a significant business impact.

Describe a time you had to navigate organizational politics to get something done.

What is the difference between a stack and a queue? When would you use each?

Explain the difference between HTTP GET and POST requests.

What is version control and why is it important?

What is an API? Can you explain REST?

What is the difference between SQL and NoSQL databases? When would you choose each?

Explain the concept of database indexing. What are the trade-offs?

What is the difference between authentication and authorization? How would you implement both?

How would you debug a production issue where an API endpoint is intermittently slow?

Explain the event loop in JavaScript. How does async code execute?

What is CI/CD? Describe a pipeline you have set up or worked with.

How do you approach making a system highly available? What trade-offs are involved?

Describe your approach to designing a system for observability from day one.

How would you migrate a monolithic application to microservices?

What strategies do you use to ensure code quality across a large team?

Explain how you would design a caching strategy for a high-traffic application.

Design a URL shortener like bit.ly.

Design a rate limiter for an API.

Design a notification system that supports email, SMS, and push notifications.

How would you design a file upload and storage system?

Design a real-time collaborative document editor like Google Docs.

Design a distributed task scheduling system like cron at scale.

Design a search autocomplete system.

Design an event-driven architecture for an e-commerce platform.

How would you design a multi-tenant SaaS platform?

Design a basic chat application.

How do you prioritize work when everything seems urgent?

Describe how you onboard a new team member effectively.

How do you handle underperformance on your team?

How do you build and maintain engineering culture on a team?

Tell me about a time you had to make a difficult trade-off between speed and quality.

How do you align engineering priorities with business goals?

Describe how you manage technical debt in an organization.

How do you approach hiring and building a diverse engineering team?