Behavioral: Walk Through a Significant Project (Technical Screen — Software Engineer)
Provide a detailed walkthrough of one significant project you worked on. Be specific, quantify impact, and highlight your decision-making.
Address each of the following:
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Project context and scope
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What problem were you solving? Who was the user? What were the constraints (e.g., latency, scale, reliability, compliance)?
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Your ownership and contributions
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Exactly which components, decisions, and deliverables were yours vs. the team’s.
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Key trade-offs and rationale
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The options you considered, the criteria you used (e.g., latency, cost, complexity, time-to-market), and why you chose what you did.
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Handling a tight schedule
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A time when the schedule was very tight: how you prioritized, de-risked, de-scoped, or parallelized work.
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Team and roles
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Who else was on the project and each collaborator’s role.
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Disagreements or conflicts
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A disagreement, how you navigated it, and the outcome.
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Timeline and milestones
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Outline the major phases and checkpoints (e.g., design, implementation, testing, launch).
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Success criteria and measurement
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Define what success looked like and how you measured it (metrics, experiments, SLOs, cost, user impact).
Aim for a concise 5–7 minute walkthrough with follow-up depth if asked.