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IntermediateBEHAVIORAL
Tell me about a time you had to balance delivery deadlines with maintaining code quality in a backend system—what trade-offs did you make, how did you communicate them to stakeholders, and what was the outcome?
Backend Developer
General

Sample Answer

At my last job I led a three-person backend squad delivering a new billing endpoint on a 6-week roadmap that slipped to 4 weeks due to business priority shifts. I pushed for a minimal, well-tested core API first and deferred non-essential optimizations and extended metrics to a follow-up sprint. I wrote the critical unit and integration tests (covering 85% of spent logic), added a lightweight contract test with the frontend team, and flagged technical debt in the ticket backlog with clear risk levels. I communicated trade-offs in two short demos and a risk memo to Product and Engineering Managers. We shipped on time, incidents were zero in the first month, and the deferred work was completed in sprint 5 with no regressions.

Keywords

Prioritized core functionality with adequate tests over polishingClear risk documentation and stakeholder communicationMeasured outcome: on-time delivery and zero incidents first month
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