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Technical Questions

Types of Technical Questions in SA Interviews​

You are sure to face technical questions during the SA interview loop, but the types of technical questions can vary based on:

  • Seniority (junior vs. senior)
  • Role Type (generalist SA vs. specialized)
  • Company (cloud provider vs. niche SAAS provider, etc.)

Let's investigate a bit before diving into examples.

What Types of Technical Questions Will I Get?​

Tip: If you haven't already, read up on what the SA role entails, and try to get a sense of what's expected of SAs at your target company. Read the job description carefully if unsure.

The most common types of technical questions for SAs are:

  1. Basic Technical: "What happens when you type a URL into a browser?"
  2. SA-specific Technical: "Design a cloud-native architecture for a self-serve insurance product."
  3. Technical/Behavioral: "Describe a database to a non-technical person."
  4. System Design: "Design the payment system for Amazon Prime."

Let's look at each in a bit more depth.

Basic Technical​

Basic technical questions like "What happens when you type a URL into a browser?" are more common in earlier interview rounds and for more junior candidates. Interviewers are looking to get a sense of your basic technical knowledge and your curiosity about technology outside of your immediate domain.

They can be very general or specific to the company you're interviewing with. Examples include:

  • "What are the usual components of a website’s backend?"
  • "What options are there to protect the website against malicious actors, for example, hackers trying to perform DDOS attacks?"
  • "What are the considerations when choosing between an SQL and a NoSQL database for the website?"

SA-specific Technical​

These questions range in difficulty depending on the role. In general, interviewers are assessing your experience with concepts you'll encounter on-the-job, such as cloud architecture, APIs, different types of databases, etc. You may also be asked basic questions on how to improve different performance characteristics like availability or latency.

For example:

  • "[Given a specific scenario] would you recommend REST or SOAP APIs?"
  • "Suppose you are the administrator of a website, and it suddenly goes viral. You need to increase the load by 20x immediately and 50x by the next year. What are the first few steps that you would take?"
  • "Supposing the website is similar to Netflix, i.e., delivers videos to users all across the world, how can you reduce latency in users accessing the content on the website?"

Technical/Behavioral​

SAs rely on communication skills to relay technical information. Interviewers want to know you can adapt your message to your audience, work through miscommunications, and "keep your cool" when you don't know the answer. You may get some technical questions that are actually behavioral questions in disguise. Our recommendation is to treat every question as an assessment of your communication skills - keep your audience in mind, be succinct, and don't be afraid to say "I don't know."

Sample technical/behavioral questions include:

  • "Describe a database to a non-technical person."
  • "Tell me about a time when you tailored a demo to suit the needs of a customer."
  • "Tell me about a time when a customer misunderstood a feature and raised objections to your solution. How did you resolve the problem?"

System Design​

System design questions are popular with virtually all engineering-adjacent roles. Typically, you're given a vague prompt such as "design a rate limiter" or something company-specific, like "design the payment system for Amazon Prime." The expectations for system design interviews vary widely depending on how technical you're expected to be. SAs should be comfortable designing high-level architectures, database schemas, and the like, but unless you're interviewing for a very senior or technical role, you won't be held to the same standards as engineers or engineering managers. Regardless, it's helpful to practice these.

Example system design questions include:

  • "Design a URL shortener."
  • "Design TikTok."
  • "Design a database schema for a pizza ordering system."
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