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).
Enterprise Integration and Automation
Covers end to end design, architecture, implementation, and operational management of integrating software systems across an enterprise. Candidates should be able to design integration architectures that connect products with enterprise technology stacks such as customer relationship management systems, enterprise resource planning systems, data warehouses, and cloud platforms. Key topics include common integration patterns and anti patterns such as point to point, hub and spoke, enterprise service bus, publish subscribe and event driven architecture, and batch based extract transform load pipelines; interface choices including application programming interfaces, messaging, streaming and batch data exchanges; and trade offs in latency, throughput, delivery semantics and complexity. Data topics include data flow mapping, data quality, reconciliation, master data management, schema evolution, privacy and data governance. Strategy and operational concerns include migration and cutover planning, testing and rollback strategies, monitoring and observability of data flows and dependencies, service level agreement and capacity planning, performance and scalability under load, and incident response. Engineering details include version and contract management for interfaces, dependency and compatibility management, idempotency and error handling strategies, reconciliation and eventual consistency patterns, and practical troubleshooting for driver, protocol and component incompatibilities. Automation and workflow topics cover orchestration, choreography, workflow automation to reduce manual work, vendor selection and governance, and the trade offs between customization and configuration. Candidates should be able to identify integration risks, propose architecture and operational mitigations, and reason about testing, monitoring, security, maintainability and continuous improvement for integrated systems.
System Integration and Standards
Covers designing and integrating new systems to interoperate with existing infrastructure while adhering to or thoughtfully deviating from industry standards. Topics include understanding relevant standards such as federal information processing standards and transport layer security standards, handling cryptographic compatibility and algorithm agility, designing for graceful degradation and backward compatibility, managing version compatibility and breaking changes, application programming interface versioning strategies, data migration during upgrades, legacy system integration patterns, and clear upgrade and deprecation strategies. Also includes risk identification and mitigation for compatibility issues, testing and validation approaches for integration points, and security considerations when connecting disparate systems.
Application Programming Interface Design and Communication
Test the candidates ability to design clean application programming interfaces that are intuitive for clients and to clearly explain the design and its trade offs. Coverage includes resource and contract design, request and response formats, error handling and status conventions, versioning and backward compatibility, performance considerations, rate limiting and security basics, and selection of synchronous versus asynchronous communication approaches. At senior levels this expands to event driven patterns, message based systems, gateway patterns, and how interface decisions affect downstream systems and reliability.
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.
API Strategy and Integration Architecture
Designing integration strategies using application programming interface first approaches, event driven architectures, and partner integration patterns. Topics include API governance, versioning, authentication and authorization, rate limiting, contract design, webhooks versus polling trade offs, and how integration patterns enable composability across systems such as marketing, customer relationship management, and analytics platforms. Candidates should explain how to choose integration approaches that balance reliability, scalability, and developer experience.
Enterprise Platforms and Integration
Designing, integrating, and operating enterprise software platforms and middleware that connect applications, data stores, and third party systems. Topics include enterprise middleware, API gateways, connectors and adapters, message brokers and integration buses; common integration patterns such as publish subscribe, request response, and event driven architectures; data transformation and schema mapping; transactional and eventual consistency considerations across heterogeneous systems; versioning and backward compatibility of integration contracts; identity federation and single sign on strategies; integration testing and validation; observability and error handling for integration points including retries and idempotency; deployment and change management for platform components; vendor evaluation and third party integration concerns; and governance and operational practices for platform evolution at scale.
Systems Integration and Coordination
Designing and engineering systems composed of multiple interacting technology components. Covers application programming interface design and contract management, message based integration and event driven patterns, data synchronization and consistency strategies, versioning and compatibility approaches, deployment and release coordination, integration testing and staging validation, observability and monitoring of interactions, error handling and retry policies, transactional and consistency boundaries, dependency mapping and governance, security boundaries and intercomponent authentication and authorization, and rollback and migration approaches to reduce risk.
API and Data Model Design
Design of clear application programming interfaces and corresponding data models that support scalability and maintainability. Topics include defining service boundaries and endpoints, request and response schema design, versioning and compatibility strategies, idempotency and error handling patterns, pagination and rate limiting, authentication and authorization implications, normalization and denormalization trade offs, indexing and query patterns, schema migration approaches, and how API and data model choices affect performance and operational complexity.
Complex System Integration and Interoperability
This topic focuses on designing and operating reliable integrations between heterogeneous systems. It covers API and contract design, synchronous and asynchronous integration patterns, messaging and event based architectures, data model mapping and transformation, schema evolution and versioning, idempotency and retry semantics, cross system consistency and transaction patterns, adapter layers and middleware, contract testing and integration testing, monitoring and tracing across boundaries, and security and authentication between systems.