Sample Answer
First I’d reproduce load in a staging environment and gather p50/p95/p99 latencies, error rates, CPU, memory, GC, DB query times, and queue/backpressure metrics. I’d use Prometheus + Grafana for metrics, Jaeger for traces, and pprof/Flamegraphs for CPU hotspots. In one incident we saw p99 jump to 3s and 10% timeouts; traces pointed to a blocking external API call and a hot DB index. Short-term I added circuit breakers, increased replicas from 4 to 8 behind the load balancer, introduced a 500ms request timeout, and cached responses in Redis — latency dropped from 1200ms median to ~200ms and timeouts fell to <0.1% within 48 hours. Long-term I refactored the slow path to async processing, added read replicas and composite indexes, and introduced rate-limiting to protect the DB. I coordinated this across a 5-person platform and data team over three sprints.
Keywords
In your resume you note improving or optimizing [a process, KPI, or metric]. What specific baseline metrics did you start from, what steps did you personally take, and how did you verify that the improvement was due to your changes rather than external factors?
On your resume you mention working on a cross-functional project (e.g., involving multiple teams or stakeholders). Describe a situation from that project where priorities conflicted—how did you navigate the trade-offs and what was the final outcome?
Walk me through a recent multi-channel digital marketing campaign you managed end-to-end. How did you set objectives, choose channels, allocate budget, and measure success?
In your civil engineering studies, what specific design coursework or project work did you complete related to irrigation channels or canals (e.g., design of lined/unlined canals, distributaries, minors)? Describe one such design in detail, including how you determined discharge, permissible velocity, section dimensions, and lining choice for Gujarat-type soil and climate conditions.
Based on your hydrology and irrigation engineering background, explain how you would estimate the irrigation water requirement for a kharif crop in a semi-arid region of Gujarat. Walk me through each step: from reference evapotranspiration estimation, crop coefficient selection, effective rainfall calculation, to arriving at canal discharge for a given command area.