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Engineering

Backend Developer interview questions

These are common Backend Developer interview questions, each with a short tip on how to answer it well. Practise out loud, and lead with specific examples and measurable results.

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Common Backend Developer interview questions

How would you design a scalable API?

How to answer. Clarify requirements, then cover data, caching, and scale.

SQL versus NoSQL, when do you use each?

How to answer. Compare structure and consistency with examples.

How do you secure an API?

How to answer. Mention auth, validation, and rate limiting.

How do you handle a slow query?

How to answer. Talk profiling, indexing, and query rewrites.

What is idempotency and why does it matter?

How to answer. Give a concrete example like payment retries.

How do you keep services reliable?

How to answer. Cover monitoring, retries, and graceful failure.

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