15 questions a Software Engineer interviewer will ask

Tell me about a time you had to make a significant technical trade-off. What did you choose and why?

Describe a system you designed from scratch. Walk me through your architecture decisions.

How do you approach debugging a production issue that you cannot reproduce locally?

Tell me about a time you disagreed with a technical decision made by your team. What happened?

How would you design a rate limiter for a high-traffic API?

Describe a project where you had to learn a new technology quickly. How did you approach it?

Your team's deployment pipeline is taking 45 minutes. How would you reduce it?

Tell me about a time you improved the performance of a system significantly.

How do you decide when to refactor code vs. ship a feature?

Describe a time you mentored a junior developer. What was your approach?

Walk me through how you would design a notification system at scale.

Tell me about a project that failed. What did you learn?

How do you ensure code quality across a team of varying experience levels?

A critical service your team owns is experiencing intermittent failures. Walk me through your response.

How do you approach writing tests? When do you test and when do you skip?