Question 1

How do you approach designing a high-throughput microservice architecture?

Accepted Answer

I start by defining clear service boundaries and domain models. I use event-driven communication (Kafka/RabbitMQ) for asynchronous tasks, implement database per service with Redis caching, and enforce API gateways with rate limiting and JWT authentication.

Question 2

What is the difference between SQL indexing and full-table scans?

Accepted Answer

A full-table scan checks every single row sequentially (O(N)), whereas a B-Tree index allows log-time lookup (O(log N)). Indexes significantly improve SELECT query speed but add slight overhead to INSERT and UPDATE operations.

Question 3

Tell me about a time you resolved a major production outage under pressure.

Accepted Answer

During a flash traffic surge, our API response time spiked to 5s. I immediately inspected Datadog APM logs, identified unindexed database queries, applied emergency query caching in Redis, and brought latency down to 80ms within 15 minutes.

Software Engineer Interview Questions & Cheat Sheet 2026

Master technical, behavioral, and system design questions asked by top tech employers.

System Design
How do you approach designing a high-throughput microservice architecture?

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Technical
What is the difference between SQL indexing and full-table scans?

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Behavioral
Tell me about a time you resolved a major production outage under pressure.

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