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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. Retention & Purge intermediate

    A subject erasure request arrives for one customer. Their rows sit in a lakehouse table of 4 billion rows in 1,100 partitions, with 30 days of snapshot retention, plus a search index and two downstream marts. Roughly what does honouring it cost, and which assumption dominates?

    3 min answer gdprerasureimmutabilitysnapshots
  2. Retries & Backoff intermediate

    A wallet platform sees intermittent failures from a downstream bank, and its own retries turn a partial degradation into a total outage. What combination of controls prevents a retry storm?

    2 min answer mobikwikretry-stormbackoffjitter
  3. Reverse ETL intermediate

    A company wants warehouse data pushed back into operational systems. What are the design considerations, and what should not go through this path?

    2 min answer udaanreverse-etloperationalfreshness
  4. Reverse ETL intermediate

    A platform pushes warehouse-derived data back into operational systems. What are the risks, and what must be designed?

    2 min answer reverse-etloperational-datafreshnessidempotency
  5. Reverse ETL intermediate

    Marketing wants warehouse segments pushed into the campaign tool hourly. What do you require before agreeing?

    2 min answer integrationgovernanceoperations
  6. Reverse Proxies intermediate

    A page is identical for all users except a small personalised header. How do you cache it?

    2 min answer cachingpersonalisationedgenyt
  7. Reversibility intermediate

    A team must decide quickly under uncertainty. How should decisions be classified so that speed is applied where it is safe?

    2 min answer growwreversibilityspeeddecisions
  8. Reversibility intermediate

    How should reversibility change how much analysis a decision receives, and how do you assess whether a decision is genuinely reversible?

    2 min answer reversibilitydecision-makingone-way-dooranalysis
  9. Reversibility intermediate

    You have limited time to deliberate. Which decisions on a new platform deserve it, and which should be made quickly?

    1 min answer decision-makingreversibilityprioritisation
  10. Rightsizing intermediate

    A platform team cuts CPU and memory requests across 900 Kubernetes deployments. Average pod requests drop 40%, the rightsizing dashboard shows the win, and three weeks later the monthly node bill is unchanged. Where did the saving go?

    2 min answer kubernetesbin-packingrightsizingautoscaler
  11. Rightsizing intermediate

    A platform's rightsizing programme reduces instance sizes based on average utilisation, and incidents follow. What was wrong with the method?

    2 min answer rightsizingheadroompercentilescapacity
  12. Rightsizing intermediate

    A rightsizing proposal moves 180 steady services from 4-vCPU general-purpose instances to 2-vCPU burstable instances because average CPU is 9%, projecting a 55% saving. Several of those services run a two-hour nightly batch. Review the proposal - what would you change, what would you keep, and what would you leave alone?

    2 min answer rightsizingburstablecpu-creditsheadroom