LLM Application Engineering: RAG vs Fine-Tuning, Context Limits, State and Prompt Injection

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Quick Overview

Four rapid-fire questions on building applications with large language models: how retrieval-augmented generation relates to fine-tuning, what to do when requests exceed the context window, how to make stateless model calls stateful, and how to defend a tool-using agent against prompt injection. It tests practical, production-level judgment.

LLM Application Engineering: RAG vs Fine-Tuning, Context Limits, State and Prompt Injection

Company: Mercor

Role: Software Engineer

Category: Machine Learning

Difficulty: medium

Interview Round: Technical Screen

Overview: Four rapid-fire questions on building applications with large language models: how retrieval-augmented generation relates to fine-tuning, what to do when requests exceed the context window, how to make stateless model calls stateful, and how to defend a tool-using agent against prompt injection. It tests practical, production-level judgment.

Read the full Mercor Software Engineer interview experience this question came from

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Mercor
Sep 3, 2026
mediumSoftware EngineerTechnical ScreenMachine Learning
14
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