APIs, Networking & Integration Topics
API design, management, and integration patterns including REST, GraphQL, and other protocols. Covers API contract design, versioning strategies, error handling, idempotency, deprecation planning, and SDK/integration frameworks. Includes system-to-system integration, webhook patterns, and integration platform considerations. Excludes network infrastructure and network-layer protocols (see Network Architecture under Cloud & Infrastructure or a dedicated networking category if needed).
Service Communication and API Design
Design and specify APIs and interservice communication patterns for systems that must scale. Topics include REST design and best practices, API versioning and deprecation strategies, backward compatibility and API evolution, contract design between services, choosing protocols such as gRPC versus HTTP for internal or external communication, security and authentication patterns at the API level, performance and scalability considerations, observability and monitoring of service interactions, and strategies for evolving interfaces without breaking consumers.
Solution Architecture and System Integration
Designing end to end solutions that integrate multiple systems and services. Topics include API design and compatibility, protocol choices, data flow and transformation, middleware and orchestration, handling partial failures and eventual consistency, versioning and backward compatibility, and non functional requirements such as performance and security. Emphasis on mapping business requirements to technical solutions and integration strategies.
Application Layer Services and Protocols
Evaluate understanding of how application layer services use the network and how failures at this layer differ from lower layer problems. Topics include the Hypertext Transfer Protocol and Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure, fundamentals of the Transport Layer Security handshake and certificate validation, how load balancers and proxies affect connection termination and header handling, and interactions between protocol versions and performance. Candidates should also explain the Domain Name System resolution path including caching and recursion, and the basics of Simple Mail Transfer Protocol and common email delivery and relay failure modes. Interviewers may probe how to distinguish transport level retransmission or connection issues from application level errors, how to interpret response status codes and error messages, and how to diagnose application failures that occur despite apparently healthy lower layer connectivity.
Custom Solution Architecture
Evaluates ability to design bespoke technical solutions that integrate a platform with customer systems. Topics include integration patterns for synchronous and asynchronous data exchange, data flows and transformation, identity and access management, secure connectivity and encryption, schema and contract management, scaling and partitioning to meet customer volume, error handling and idempotency, phased implementation and migration plans, testing and validation approaches, monitoring and operational readiness, and cost and compliance considerations.
Cloud SDK and API Integration
Demonstrate effective use of cloud provider software development kits and service application programming interfaces to build reliable integrations. Candidates should cover authenticating and authorizing API calls, client library usage patterns, handling rate limits and throttling, error models and retry policies, schema and contract management for APIs, using service emulators and mocks for testing, and combining SDK based interactions with automation and infrastructure as code workflows. Interviewers will evaluate trade offs between using managed SDKs direct API calls and higher level tooling.