Solution / Enterprise Architect Interview Prep & Rubrics

Trade-off defence, NFRs, modernisation sequencing, and the stakeholder and cost conversations architects are actually assessed on.

The loop, in order

1. 1Architecture & Tech Leadership21 questions · 7 topicsRounds specific to senior, staff, principal, and architect titles, where the subject is judgement and organisational impact rather than code.
2. 2System Design70 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.
3. 3Backend Engineering30 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. 4Databases & SQL28 questions · 8 topicsQuery-writing rounds and the storage-engine reasoning behind why a query is slow, for backend, data, and DBA roles alike.
5. 5DevOps & Cloud37 questions · 8 topicsPlatform and infrastructure questions for DevOps, SRE, and any backend role expected to own its service in production.
6. 6Behavioural & Culture Fit25 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.
7. 7HR, Screening & Offer19 questions · 6 topicsThe recruiter and HR rounds that gate the technical loop and decide your compensation, where most candidates improvise and lose money.
8. 8Working in a Domain6 questions · 3 topicsDomain knowledge as a skill rather than as a subject: why it decides between two technically equal candidates, how the vocabulary gates entry, and how to acquire it deliberately instead of absorbing it over a decade.
9. 9Banking & Financial Services27 questions · 11 topicsHow a bank works underneath the app: the ledger that must always balance, the rails money moves over, the identity and financial-crime controls wrapped around it, and the regulatory reporting that constrains every design decision.
10. 10Healthcare & Life Sciences19 questions · 7 topicsClinical and payer systems, where the record is legally significant, interoperability is decades of overlapping standards, and interrupting a clinician has a real cost.
11. 11E-commerce & Retail23 questions · 9 topicsThe path from browse to delivered and back again, where inventory is the central consistency problem and every edge case is a real order belonging to a real person.
12. 12Regulation & Compliance15 questions · 5 topicsThe rules that reach into system design across every industry, and the difference between having a control, implementing it, and being able to evidence it.