Behavioral prompt: Walk through a recent complex project
Context
You are interviewing for a software engineering role. Present one recent, complex project you worked on. Explain the system at a high level, then detail your personal impact.
What to cover
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Architecture overview
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Core components and how they interact
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Data/traffic flow and key technologies
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Your contributions
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Components you designed/implemented
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Key decisions you owned and trade-offs
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Measurable outcomes
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Performance, reliability, cost, or UX improvements with metrics
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Collaboration
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Cross-team partners, alignment, and handoffs
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Hardest problems you personally solved
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Why they were hard and how you solved them
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Ownership clarity
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What you did vs. what others did
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Retrospective
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What you’d do differently next time and why