FAANG
Big Tech and product companies
Large product companies running a standardised, centrally calibrated loop: an algorithmic screen, one or two design rounds scaled to level, and a behavioural round scored against published principles.
Level up your career inSystem Design
From deep technical fundamentals to complex system architecture. Access expertly engineered interview scenarios and grading rubrics designed to bridge the gap between where you are and where you want to be.
- detailed scenarios
- 1,100+detailed scenarios
- fundamental concepts
- 3,100+fundamental concepts
- subject areas
- 55+subject areas
- industry domains
- 9+industry domains
- technical topics
- 310+technical topics
- role paths
- 35+role paths
Calibrated against the engineering standards of industry-leading companies
GoogleAccentureStripeMicrosoftDeloitteDatabricksEYAmazonHubSpotJane StreetMetaCognizantVercelTCSNetflixLinearTwo SigmaAirbnbInfosysPlaidAppleCapgeminiFigmaCitadelZapierShopifyPwCNotionPostmanIBMDockerGitLabUberKPMGSnowflakeAtlassianJPMorganOpenAIAnthropicCisco
Plan from a job description
Prepare for the job you applied to, not a generic list
A banking Java role and a startup Java role are different interviews. Give us the job description and the plan is built from what it actually asks for.
1. Paste or upload
The job description as text, PDF or Word. Read in your browser - the file is never uploaded.
2. Check what we found
Skills, level, employer type and domain, each with the line it came from. Remove or add topics.
3. Get your plan
Day by day, built from those topics. Skills we don't cover yet, you can ask us to add.
Build from a job descriptionFree. Try it signed out; sign in to build and save.
“6+ years of experience in Java, Spring Boot … event-driven integrations using Kafka … understanding of KYC, AML and reconciliation flows in banking”
- Payments
- Kafka & messaging
- Java
- Spring Boot
- Microservices
- PostgreSQL
- KYC & onboarding
- AML & financial crime
- Level
- Senior
- Employer
- GCC / captive
- Domain
- Banking
The science of job readiness.
Stop relying on vague advice. We demystify the hiring process with transparent, data-driven scorecards that evaluate your technical depth and behavioral signals.
Live Rubric Evaluation: Watch your answer get mapped directly to staff-level scoring criteria.
Identify Red Flags: Learn the exact phrases that trigger immediate rejections.
Compare with the Standard Model: See how textbook answers fail to demonstrate actual seniority.
System Design
Distributed Caching Strategy
Positive Signals (What Interviewer Scores)
- Calculates memory footprint and TTL invalidation trade-offs out loud
- Addresses cache stampede and cache penetration
- States the blast radius during node failover
Common Red Flags (Where Points Are Lost)
- Recommending Redis without specifying eviction memory caps
- Not naming the write-through versus write-back latency cost
Level: Senior / Staff SDE
How Preptima Works
Most platforms hand you the answer. Preptima hands you the scorecard.
Why Preptima exists
Most interview prep is a pile of questions with no order. You don't know what to study first, what your target company actually tests, or when you are ready - so you grind through generic lists and hope. Preptima starts from the other end: how interviewers really score a candidate, and builds everything around that.
Roadmap, plan and content live together. Tell us your role, seniority, the kind of company and how many days you have, and you get a study order built from the question bank, not a generic syllabus. Every answer shows what the interviewer is looking for and the follow-ups that come next. And because the questions are real production scenarios rather than puzzles, what you practise to get the job is what you will use to do it well.
Build your planGeneric question dumps
A plan for your role, level, target company and timeline
Model answers to memorise
The signals the interviewer scores, and the follow-ups they ask next
Studying everything, in no order
A roadmap: what to cover first, and when you are ready
Prep that ends at the offer
Production scenarios you will meet on the job
Pick Your Archetype
Don't study for Google if you're interviewing at a Series A startup. We calibrate the rubrics specifically to the employer tier you are targeting.
Practice Scenarios
No generic puzzles. Face production scenarios exactly as a Staff Engineer would: scaling challenges, 3 AM outages, and migration complexities.
Master the Rubric
Learn the exact 4-5 signals interviewers evaluate. Avoid the hidden traps and learn how to navigate the inevitable deep-dive follow-ups.
| Platform | Coding Puzzles | System Design | DevOps & Data Tracks | Employer Archetypes | Explicit Scoring Rubrics | Production Scenarios |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Preptima | Deep coverage | Deep coverage | Deep coverage | Deep coverage | Deep coverage | Deep coverage |
| Other Platforms | Deep coverage | Basic or theoretical | Not covered | Not covered | Not covered | Basic or theoretical |
Deep Coverage Basic / Theoretical Not Covered
Build Your Custom Plan
Everything you need to master your specific domain.
Scored by Employer Tier
All 4 Archetypes & RubricsDifferent companies weight rounds differently. Select your employer tier to inspect how their hiring panels calibrate candidate rubrics.
GCC
GCC and captive centres
The offshore engineering arm of a global bank, insurer, retailer, telco, or product company, hiring to own a product area rather than to staff a project.
consulting
IT services and consulting
Firms that sell delivery capacity and advisory work to clients, where the interview is partly technical assessment and partly a rehearsal of how you will sound in front of the client paying for you.
startup
Startups and scale-ups
Small product teams hiring for end-to-end ownership, where the loop is short, idiosyncratic, and usually anchored on a take-home or a paired session in the actual codebase.
What is covered
Engineering craft, the languages and platforms on top of it, the leadership and product rounds that decide senior outcomes, and the industry domains that separate two technically equal candidates.
Engineering Core
Product Engineering
Languages & Frameworks
Infrastructure & Security
Quality & Design
AI & Machine Learning
Senior & Leadership
Product & Business
Cross-cutting Rounds
Domain & Industry
Delivery & Customer
Or follow one role
All 39 tracksA curated path through the sections that matter for one job, so you are not deciding what to study before you have started.
Backend Engineer — Java
The full loop for a JVM backend role: coding, Java and Spring depth, databases, service design, and the behavioural round.
Frontend Engineer
Browser-platform depth, framework rounds, a frontend system design round, and the accessibility and performance questions that follow.
Full-stack Engineer
Both ends of the stack at moderate depth, with the integration and API-boundary questions specific to full-stack loops.
Data Engineer
Pipelines, Spark and warehousing, SQL depth, and the modelling and orchestration questions specific to data platforms.
DevOps / SRE
Infrastructure, pipelines, Kubernetes, and the reliability and incident-response judgement that defines the SRE round.
Engineering Manager
People scenarios, delivery judgement, hiring calibration, and retained technical credibility across a mixed loop.
Recently added
All questionshardCase StudyTake Home
Prepare a 30-60-90 day plan for joining as VP of Engineering at a company whose engineering team keeps missing its deadlines.
A strong 30-60-90 day plan for a VP of Engineering spends the first month diagnosing why dates slip, the second fixing how commitments are made and landing one re-baselined milestone, and the third installing a planning system. Each phase ends in outcomes the CEO can check, not a list of meetings.
mediumBehavioural
A headquarters team in another time zone keeps making decisions that land on your team. Tell me how you handled it.
Treat it as a process gap, not a grudge. Find out where and when decisions are made, get your team's constraints in front of the deciders before the meeting through short written proposals with a comment window both time zones can reach, and escalate a specific costly decision, not the people who made it.
hardBehaviouralScenario
A peer executive challenges your strategy in front of the CEO. How do you respond in the room, and what do you do afterwards?
Treat executive conflict as information, not an attack. In the room, restate their strongest point, answer what your data covers, name what you will come back with and when. Afterwards, meet them privately, find whether it is a dispute about facts or priorities, and return to the CEO jointly. Never score points.
easyConcept
Explain ACID using a bank transfer of 100 from one account to another, and tell me what isolation protects you from.
In a transfer, atomicity means the debit and credit commit together or not at all, consistency means declared constraints such as a non-negative balance still hold, isolation stops concurrent transactions seeing or overwriting each other's half-done work, and durability means a confirmed commit survives a crash.
mediumCodingScenario
Your assessment includes a section where an AI assistant helps you fix a small repository. What is that section scoring?
An AI-assisted assessment section scores whether you understand the code before you change it, whether you verify every change by running the tests, and whether you can explain what you changed and why. The assistant speeds up reading and typing, but judgement is yours, and clever prompting earns nothing by itself.
easyConceptCoding
In an online assessment, "what does this code print?" questions keep catching you out. How do you answer them quickly without guessing?
Use code tracing, not reading. Write a small table with one column per variable and one row per step, count loop iterations from the bounds first, and apply the language's own rules for integer division, references and evaluation order. Skim the options to see which rule the question is testing.
Frequently Asked Questions
Everything you need to know about how Preptima accelerates your interview preparation.
How does Preptima differ from traditional coding interview platforms?
While most platforms focus entirely on algorithmic puzzles and binary 'pass/fail' outcomes, Preptima mirrors the reality of a modern hiring loop. We recognize that senior interviews are won on nuance, not rote memorization. For every scenario, we provide the hidden scoring rubric—the specific 'Probes' interviewers use to measure your depth, and the 'Traps' that reveal a lack of production experience. You learn how to defend your architectural decisions rather than just reciting a textbook answer.
Why does the Study Planner require an 'Employer Archetype'?
The 'one-size-fits-all' interview is a myth. A Big Tech hyperscaler (like Meta or Google) utilizes highly calibrated, algorithm-heavy loops to measure abstract problem-solving. Conversely, an IT Consultancy values stakeholder management and broad architectural breadth, while a Series A startup heavily weights operational instinct and end-to-end ownership. Preptima dynamically re-weights your daily study blocks based on the specific archetype you are targeting so you are not studying for Google when you are interviewing at a startup.
Are the questions based on theoretical concepts or real-world systems?
Every question in the Preptima bank originates from genuine production environments and actual hiring loops. Instead of asking you to simply define a distributed cache, we present the scenario exactly as a Staff Engineer would face it: 'You have a massive cache stampede at 3 AM. Your database is recovering, but your service is not. What do you do?' This forces you to navigate ambiguity, capacity estimation, and graceful degradation just as you would on the job.
Is the platform limited solely to Software Engineering and System Design?
No. A modern tech organization relies on a diverse ecosystem of specialists, and our curriculum reflects that reality. Beyond exhaustive Frontend and Backend engineering tracks, Preptima features deep, dedicated coverage for DevOps and Cloud Reliability (SRE), Data & AI Engineering, QA Automation, Product Management, and Technical Presales. Each discipline has its own specialized rubrics and case studies.
How does Preptima adjust for different seniority levels?
An Entry-Level developer and a Principal Architect are never scored on the same matrix, even if they are asked the exact same question. Preptima tags every question by seniority level and explicitly outlines how expectations scale. Where a junior candidate is expected to produce working code, a senior candidate is graded on how well they articulate the blast radius of their design, their understanding of multi-tenant isolation, and their ability to own cross-team technical strategy.
Stop guessing what the hiring committee wants.
Practise on the scenarios interviewers actually score, in a plan built for your role, your level and the company you are interviewing with.
No credit card required Instant access