Learn AI ↗

Quiz

179 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 areas179 Architecture Fundamentals5 Distributed Systems26 Data Architecture23 Cloud Architecture19 Networking17 API & Integration Architecture13 Reliability & Resilience9 Observability8 Performance & Capacity Engineering6 Security Architecture16 Cost Architecture & FinOps4 Business Architecture2 Architecture Communication3 Enterprise Architecture2 Legacy Modernization3 AI-Era Architecture3 Software Architecture & Engineering3 Architecture Patterns6 Architecture Decision-Making9 The Architect's Meta-Skills2
Difficulty Any beginner intermediate advanced

179 questions.

  1. Security Architecture advanced

    The 2019 Capital One breach chained a server-side request forgery to an over-permissive IAM role. Walk the chain, and say which single control would have contained it.

    2 min answer ssrfiamleast-privilegecloud
  2. Security Architecture advanced

    Your services currently trust anything inside the VPC. A security review says move to zero trust. What changes, and what will it cost you?

    2 min answer zero-trustmtlsidentitysecurity
  3. Service Discovery advanced

    Your service registry becomes unavailable. Every service is healthy. What happens, and what should happen?

    2 min answer discoverystatic-stabilityavailabilitycaching
  4. Service Mesh Networking advanced

    A platform team proposes adopting a service mesh for 40 services. Make the case for and against, then decide.

    2 min answer service-meshmtlssidecarplatform
  5. SLI, SLO & SLA advanced

    Leadership asks for "five nines" across the platform. Engineering says it is impossible. Design the response.

    2 min answer sloerror-budgetstakeholdersavailability
  6. Software Architecture advanced

    Knight Capital lost roughly $460M in 45 minutes in 2012 after a deployment reached seven of eight servers. Which architectural failures made that possible, and which one would you fix first?

    2 min answer deploymentfeature-flagskill-switchcase-study
  7. Software Architecture advanced

    Uber reached roughly 2,200 microservices and found the estate incomprehensible. Their fix was not consolidation. What was it, and why does it generalise?

    2 min answer case-studyubermicroservicesboundaries
  8. Software Architecture advanced

    You need to ship a rewrite of the pricing engine. Same inputs, same expected outputs, completely new implementation. How do you release it?

    2 min answer releasecanarytestingrisk
  9. Strangler Fig advanced

    A 15-year-old monolith must be modernised without a rewrite and without a feature freeze. Plan the migration.

    2 min answer stranglerlegacymigrationdata
  10. Streaming Data advanced

    A streaming aggregation reports lower totals than the batch job it replaced. Both read the same source. What is likely happening?

    2 min answer streamingwatermarkslate-dataevent-time
  11. Supply Chain Security advanced

    A critical CVE is announced in a widely-used library. Walk me through the first four hours.

    2 min answer vulnerabilitysbomresponsepatching
  12. Sync vs Async advanced

    An order API calls six services synchronously and takes 3 seconds at p95, failing whenever any dependency is degraded. Redesign it.

    2 min answer asyncavailabilityeventsoutbox