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).
Migrations, Versioning & Compatibility at Scale
Understand how to design systems that support long-term evolution while maintaining compatibility. Discuss strategies for API versioning, gradual deprecation of old versions, and migration paths for customers. Be able to discuss how to maintain backward compatibility while evolving a system, and trade-offs between maintaining multiple versions versus forcing migrations. For large platforms, discuss how to coordinate migrations across thousands of dependent systems.
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.