Project Deep-Dive (Technical Screen: Behavioral & Leadership)

Context

You will be asked to walk through a recent project you owned end-to-end. Assume the interviewer is a software engineer who values clarity, impact, and trade-off reasoning. You may anonymize sensitive details. Aim for a crisp 5–7 minute walkthrough followed by Q&A.

Prompt

Deep-dive one recent project. Cover:

1. Problem, goals, and constraints
   • What was broken or missing? Why now? Who was affected?
   • Functional goals and non-functional goals (scale, latency, availability, cost, compliance).
   • Explicit constraints (legacy systems, team size, timeline, budget, tech choices).
2. Your specific responsibilities and decisions
   • What you owned vs. what others owned.
   • Key decisions you made and why.
3. Architecture and key components
   • High-level diagram verbally: data flow, storage, interfaces, dependencies.
   • Key APIs, schemas, and critical paths.
4. Major trade-offs and alternatives considered
   • Options you evaluated, decision criteria, and why you chose the final approach.
5. Timeline and risks
   • Phases/milestones, estimates vs. actuals.
   • Top risks and mitigations (rollbacks, canaries, feature flags).
6. Metrics for success and actual results
   • How you measured success (latency, throughput, error rate, cost, business impact).
   • Before/after numbers and validation method.
7. Postmortem lessons and what you'd change
   • What went well, what didn’t, and concrete changes you’d make next time.

Tip: Lead with a 30–60 second executive summary (problem → approach → impact), then dive into details.