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2627 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 areas2627 Architecture Fundamentals81 Distributed Systems101 Data Architecture90 Cloud Architecture77 Networking86 API & Integration Architecture78 Reliability & Resilience88 Observability81 Performance & Capacity Engineering90 Security Architecture85 Cost Architecture & FinOps82 Business Architecture93 Architecture Communication91 Enterprise Architecture91 Legacy Modernization82 AI-Era Architecture86 Software Architecture & Engineering84 Architecture Patterns84 Architecture Decision-Making91 The Architect's Meta-Skills92 Delivery & Release Engineering93 Platform Engineering & Developer Experience92 Testing & Quality Architecture90 Data Platform Architecture88 Streaming & Real-Time Data93 Data Governance & Semantics81 Frontend & Experience Architecture91 Edge, Mobile & IoT88 Regulatory & Data Protection Architecture90 Assurance, Audit & Model Risk88
Difficulty Any beginner intermediate advanced

39 questions in Software Architecture.

  1. Bounded Contexts intermediate

    Review this context map. Eleven bounded contexts, and nine of the relationships between them are shared kernel: a common library of domain types that every team imports and any team may change. The teams report that releases have to be coordinated. What would you change, what would you keep, and how would you argue it?

    2 min answer domain driven designbounded contextsshared kernelcoupling
  2. CI/CD intermediate

    Your monorepo runs 320 pipelines a day. Median wait before a runner picks up a job is 11 minutes; the pipeline itself takes 14. Finance asks whether doubling the runner pool is worth $9k a month. Work out the number that answers them.

    2 min answer ciqueueingdeveloper experiencecost
  3. Clean Architecture intermediate Multiple choice

    A service calls a payment provider over HTTP. The provider occasionally returns 503 and occasionally times out. In a domain / application / adapter layering, which layer should own the retry and backoff policy?

    3 min answer clean architecturehexagonalretrieslayering
  4. Clean Architecture intermediate

    A team adopts a layered architecture with strict dependency rules and finds every small change touches many files. Is the architecture wrong, or the application of it?

    2 min answer clean-architecturelayersindirectionpragmatism
  5. Clean Architecture intermediate

    Review this design. Every repository method opens its own transaction and commits before returning. One use case calls four repositories and then publishes an event. Support reports occasional orders with a payment row and no shipment row. What would you change and what would you leave alone?

    3 min answer clean architectureunit of worktransactionsoutbox
  6. Code Review intermediate

    A 40-engineer platform organisation requires two approvals on every pull request. Median time from ready-for-review to merge is 26 hours. A staff engineer proposes one approval plus mandatory post-merge review for low-risk changes. What is gained, what is paid, and when does the bill arrive?

    2 min answer code reviewlead timechange failure ratecodeowners
  7. Code Review intermediate

    A platform's code review process is slow and catches few defects. What should change?

    2 min answer code-reviewsizelatencyautomation
  8. Code Review intermediate

    A team's code review process is slow and catches few real problems. What should change?

    1 min answer postmancode-reviewfeedbackautomation
  9. Code Review intermediate

    Code review latency in your team averages one day. What do you change and what do you measure?

    2 min answer code-reviewlatencybatch-sizeflow
  10. Design Patterns intermediate

    A codebase uses many design patterns and is harder to understand than an equivalent one that uses few. What went wrong?

    2 min answer design-patternsindirectionover-engineeringreadability
  11. Design Patterns intermediate

    When does introducing a design pattern make a codebase worse?

    2 min answer patternsspeculative-generalityover-engineeringvocabulary
  12. DORA Metrics intermediate

    A team measures deployment frequency, lead time, change failure rate and recovery time. How should these be used, and how are they misused?

    2 min answer verceldorametricsdelivery