Quiz

2948 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 areas2948 Architecture Fundamentals91 Distributed Systems101 Data Architecture90 Cloud Architecture87 Networking96 API & Integration Architecture87 Reliability & Resilience99 Observability92 Performance & Capacity Engineering100 Security Architecture105 Cost Architecture & FinOps102 Business Architecture103 Architecture Communication102 Enterprise Architecture100 Legacy Modernization102 AI-Era Architecture106 Software Architecture & Engineering93 Architecture Patterns94 Architecture Decision-Making101 The Architect's Meta-Skills102 Delivery & Release Engineering103 Platform Engineering & Developer Experience102 Testing & Quality Architecture102 Data Platform Architecture98 Streaming & Real-Time Data103 Data Governance & Semantics91 Frontend & Experience Architecture101 Edge, Mobile & IoT98 Regulatory & Data Protection Architecture99 Assurance, Audit & Model Risk98

Difficulty Any beginner intermediate advanced

2948 questions.

Quiz

A service has 8,000 unit tests running in 4 minutes, over about 60,000 lines of code. Someone proposes mutation testing in CI. Estimate the runtime, and say what that number means for where it belongs.

A team adopts mutation testing to stop shipping defects in code that coverage says is tested. On a 40,000-line service with a 4-minute unit suite, what have they bought, what are they paying, and when does that bill arrive?

A team has 85% line coverage and keeps shipping defects in tested code. What would reveal the gap?

What does mutation testing reveal that coverage does not, and where is it worth the cost?

A batch job's networking costs are three times its compute cost. It reads several terabytes from object storage. What is happening?

A crawling fleet opens about 12000 short-lived outbound HTTPS connections per second through a single NAT device and each closed connection is held in a time-wait state for roughly 120 seconds. Which estimate and which binding ceiling are right?

A platform running thousands of concurrent isolated sessions starts seeing intermittent connection failures to external sites. Ports are available and CPU is low. What is the likely cause?

A service intermittently times out connecting to a managed database. The database is healthy, nothing changed, and failures correlate with traffic volume. Where do you look?

An observability platform's cloud bill shows an unexpectedly large data-processing charge from NAT gateways. What is happening, and what are the architectural fixes?

A large partner's integration contract asks for 99.99% availability and a 200 ms p99 on your API, with penalties. Your service currently runs at 99.9% and 400 ms p99. What do you agree to, and what do you trade for it?

A launch date is announced to customers before the architect has said anything. The design needs about eleven weeks and the date gives eight. Nobody objects and the team starts. Trace what happens week by week and name the week the date really breaks.

An architect must agree an integration contract with an external partner whose interests differ. What negotiating approach produces a durable technical agreement?