Backend Architecture and Service Design Questions

Focuses on designing backend systems and services with clear responsibilities, interfaces, and manageable dependencies. Topics include service oriented architecture and microservices trade offs, service boundaries and domain driven design, data ownership and consistency models, idempotency and error handling, application programming interface design and versioning, separation of concerns and modular code organization, testing strategies, deployment and release patterns, scalability and fault tolerance patterns, observability and monitoring, operational concerns including capacity planning and dependency management, and maintainability practices to enable teams to extend systems without constant refactoring. Senior level discussion includes designing for evolution, team ownership models, and balancing complexity versus simplicity across the service landscape.