Cloud / Solutions Architect Interview Prep
An interview prep path for cloud and solutions architect loops. Light on algorithmic coding, heavy on multi-cloud fundamentals, the well-architected trade-offs (availability, cost, resilience), and the system-design conversations architects are expected to lead - plus the behavioral themes that screen for influence without authority.
Cloud fundamentals across providers
Architects are expected to reason across clouds, not just one. Build a working model of the core compute/storage/identity primitives on each major provider before climbing into cross-cutting design.
Architecture and design trade-offs
The heart of the role: well-architected pillars, resilience patterns, scalability, and cost. These MCQs cover the trade-off vocabulary architects are graded on.
Networking and data foundations
Most architecture failures are network or data failures. Anchor VPC/connectivity fundamentals and data-store trade-offs before the design rounds.
System design: the architect's deep-dives
Bounded designs that exercise the conversations architects lead - edge delivery, load distribution, caching, and consistency across services.
- 01DesignDesign a CDN with Edge Compute (CloudFront / Cloudflare)System Design · Hard
- 02DesignDesign a Load Balancer (L4 vs L7, Envoy / HAProxy / ALB)System Design · Hard
- 03DesignDesign a Distributed Cache (Memcached / Redis Cluster)System Design · Hard
- 04DesignDesign a Rate Limiter (API Throttling)System Design · Medium
- 05DesignDesign a Distributed Message Queue (Kafka deep-dive)System Design · Hard
- 06DesignDesign Distributed Transactions (2PC, Saga, TCC)System Design · Hard
Behavioral: influence and judgment
Architect rounds screen for driving decisions across teams you don't manage and making pragmatic trade-offs. Have a story per theme with concrete business impact.
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Three role-targeted paths are live: Backend, SRE / DevOps, and ML Engineer. More are on the way - if you have a role you want covered, let us know.
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