Behavioral: Your Most Challenging Project (Software Engineer Onsite)

Provide a concise, structured story about a challenging project. Use a STAR-L flow (Situation, Task, Actions, Results, Learnings) and address each of the prompts below.

1. Project overview

• What was the goal? Why did it matter?
• Key constraints (e.g., time, scale, legacy systems, compliance/security, cost, availability/SLOs).
• Your role and scope (IC/lead, ownership areas, team size).

2. Cross-functional collaboration (XFN)

• How you partnered with Product, Design, and Partner Engineering (e.g., platform/billing/infra teams).
• Alignment artifacts (PRD, design doc/RFC, wireframes, ADRs), decision forums, escalation paths.
• Handling disagreements and reaching decisions.

3. Ambiguity and alignment

• What was unclear (requirements, definitions, success criteria, technical feasibility)?
• How you created clarity (spikes, data, experiments, decision records) and aligned stakeholders.

4. Trade-offs and decisions

• Major trade-offs (e.g., build vs. buy, latency vs. cost, accuracy vs. complexity, time-to-market vs. scope).
• Criteria used and why you chose the final path.

5. Success and outcomes

• How you measured success (baselines, target metrics/SLOs, adoption, reliability, cost).
• Final outcomes and impact.

6. Learnings

• What you learned, and what you'd do differently next time.