Portfolio ↗

Quiz

2741 questions of the kind that actually get asked — in interviews, in architecture review boards, and by the person who has to run the thing at 3 AM. Every answer states the trade-off rather than the slogan, and says when the obvious choice is the wrong one.

All areas2741 Architecture Fundamentals81 Distributed Systems101 Data Architecture90 Cloud Architecture87 Networking86 API & Integration Architecture78 Reliability & Resilience99 Observability92 Performance & Capacity Engineering90 Security Architecture95 Cost Architecture & FinOps92 Business Architecture93 Architecture Communication91 Enterprise Architecture91 Legacy Modernization92 AI-Era Architecture96 Software Architecture & Engineering84 Architecture Patterns84 Architecture Decision-Making91 The Architect's Meta-Skills92 Delivery & Release Engineering93 Platform Engineering & Developer Experience92 Testing & Quality Architecture102 Data Platform Architecture98 Streaming & Real-Time Data93 Data Governance & Semantics91 Frontend & Experience Architecture91 Edge, Mobile & IoT88 Regulatory & Data Protection Architecture90 Assurance, Audit & Model Risk98
Difficulty Any beginner intermediate advanced

1018 questions.

  1. Event Streaming intermediate

    A downstream consumer has been failing for four days. Your event log retains three days. What happens?

    2 min answer kafkaretentiondata-lossmonitoring
  2. Event Streaming intermediate Multiple choice

    A platform processes billions of events per day and requires ordering per customer but not globally. How should partition keys and consumer groups deliver that without creating a serialisation bottleneck?

    2 min answer confluentkafkapartitioningordering
  3. Event Streaming intermediate Multiple choice

    You have 14 systems exchanging data through bespoke point-to-point pipelines. Adding a system means building integrations to six others. Propose an alternative.

    2 min answer linkedinkafkaintegrationcoupling
  4. Exception & Waiver Management intermediate

    A platform team introduces time-boxed waivers so that teams can ship against a policy exception with a stated expiry rather than waiting for a fix. Delivery speeds up. What has the organisation given up, and when does that bill arrive?

    3 min answer waiversexceptionspolicydebt
  5. Exception & Waiver Management intermediate

    A standard cannot be met for a legitimate case. What should the exception process look like, and what does the register tell you?

    2 min answer growwexceptionswaiversregister
  6. Exception & Waiver Management intermediate

    Exceptions to standards are granted and accumulate indefinitely. What should the waiver process look like?

    1 min answer waiversexceptionsexpiryrisk-acceptance
  7. Exception & Waiver Management intermediate

    Your exception register has grown from 12 to 90 waivers in eighteen months and none have been closed. What does this tell you and what do you do?

    2 min answer governanceexceptionsstandardsrisk
  8. Presenting to Executives intermediate

    A payments platform has had a significant outage. An architect must brief the executive team. What should the brief contain, and what is the most common mistake?

    2 min answer razorpayexecutiveincidentcommunication
  9. Presenting to Executives intermediate

    How should an architect present a technical risk or an investment case to executives so that it competes successfully for funding?

    2 min answer executive-communicationriskbusiness-casefunding
  10. Explaining Trade-offs intermediate Multiple choice

    A product leader asks what it would cost to run the platform in a second region for resilience. Your single-region cloud spend is about $80k a month. What is the honest order of magnitude?

    3 min answer multi-regioncostestimationresilience
  11. Explaining Trade-offs intermediate

    A stakeholder asks "which option is better?" for a decision with genuine trade-offs. How should an architect answer?

    2 min answer tradeoffscommunicationdecision-supportbooking
  12. Explaining Trade-offs intermediate

    An architect must explain to a product leader why a requested feature will cost 150ms on the trading path. How should the trade-off be framed?

    2 min answer zerodhatradeoffscommunicationframing