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Preptima

GenAI / LLM Application Engineer

The loop for building LLM features in a product: prompting and structured output, retrieval, agents and tool use, evaluation, and the cost and safety questions that follow.

The loop, in order

  1. Generative AI & Large Language Models21 questions · 7 topicsPrompting and structured output, context and tokens, adaptation, evaluation, inference economics, injection defence, and running LLM features in production.
  2. RAG, Retrieval & Agents21 questions · 7 topicsRetrieval-augmented generation end to end: ingestion, embeddings and vector indexes, hybrid search and reranking, retrieval evaluation, permissions, and agentic tool use.
  3. Backend Engineering33 questions · 7 topicsLanguage-agnostic service engineering: the protocols, boundaries, and failure handling that sit between a coding round and a full system design round.
  4. System Design53 questions · 12 topicsOpen-ended design rounds broken into the building blocks they draw on, plus full case studies worked end to end with explicit trade-off reasoning.
  5. Python33 questions · 7 topicsPython for backend, automation, and data roles, including the runtime behaviour that surprises candidates who only know the syntax.
  6. DevOps & Cloud37 questions · 8 topicsPlatform and infrastructure questions for DevOps, SRE, and any backend role expected to own its service in production.
  7. Behavioural & Culture Fit37 questions · 8 topicsThe round candidates most often under-prepare, treated as a skill with structure rather than small talk, including the rubric interviewers score against.
  8. HR, Screening & Offer30 questions · 6 topicsThe recruiter and HR rounds that gate the technical loop and decide your compensation, where most candidates improvise and lose money.

Latest for this track

hardDesignScenario

How do you stop an agent from looping or running away?

Enforce step, token, wall-clock and monetary budgets in the orchestrator rather than in the prompt, detect repetition and lack of progress as separate conditions, and require an approval bound to specific arguments before any irreversible action. Exhausting a budget should hand back partial work, not vanish.

Agents And Tool Use5 minmid, senior, staff
hardDesignConcept

When is an agent the wrong shape for a problem?

Whenever you can draw the flowchart. A fixed pipeline with a model at the two steps needing judgement is cheaper, testable and debuggable, and per-step error compounds across a planning loop. Reach for an agent when the tool sequence is open-ended and the environment verifies the work.

Agents And Tool Use5 minmid, senior, staff, lead
mediumConceptDesign

How do you build a gold set for a retrieval system?

Source the questions from real users and from randomly sampled documents rather than from the team, label each with a quotable answer string anchored to a document rather than a chunk id so the set survives re-chunking, and hold part of it back so you are not tuning against your own measurement.

Retrieval Evaluation5 minmid, senior, staff