Backend Engineering
API Design
15 practice questions. Free questions open a full answer guide; the rest unlock with Pro.
- Walk me through how you would debug a production issue where an API endpoint is returning 500 errors for roughly 10% of requests.
- How would you make a payment or order-creation API endpoint safe to retry without double-charging the customer?Go Pro
- What does it mean for an HTTP method to be idempotent, and how does that shape how you design an API that clients might retry?Go Pro
- How would you decide between offset-based and cursor-based pagination when designing a list endpoint, and what are the trade-offs?Go Pro
- What are the trade-offs between REST and GraphQL for an API used by multiple client types (mobile, web, third-party)?Go Pro
- How do you decide when technical debt is worth paying down now versus later?Go Pro
- Describe a time you had to refactor a messy piece of code while the feature was still in use. How did you manage the risk?Go Pro
- How do you raise the technical level of the engineers around you, especially those more junior than you?Go Pro
- How do you evolve an API that other teams depend on without breaking their integrations?Go Pro
- How do you ramp up on a large, unfamiliar codebase quickly without breaking things?Go Pro
- Describe a time your technical assumptions were wrong in a significant way. What happened and what did you learn?Go Pro
- How do you approach code review — both giving and receiving feedback?Go Pro
- How do you decide when to pay down technical debt versus continuing to ship features, and how do you make that case to the rest of the team?Go Pro
- How do you handle disagreements with a product manager or engineering manager about technical scope or timelines?Go Pro
- How do you approach making a technology choice that will affect your team for years? Walk me through your decision-making process.Go Pro
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