IntermediateBehavioral (STAR)
Describe a time you had to work across the frontend and backend to resolve a production bug that impacted users. What was the issue, and how did you handle it? (Behavioral – STAR)
Full Stack Developer
General

Sample Answer

(Situation) At my last role, a key checkout flow started failing intermittently, causing about 8–10% of transactions to error out and increasing support tickets by 30%. (Task) As a full stack developer on support rotation, I needed to quickly identify whether the issue was in the React frontend, Node.js API, or database layer and restore reliability. (Action) I first added temporary logging and correlation IDs in both frontend and backend to trace failing requests end-to-end. Using these logs and browser dev tools, I discovered a race condition: the frontend was sending duplicate payment requests when the user double-clicked the pay button, and the backend was not idempotent. I implemented a frontend fix by disabling the button after first click and added a server-side idempotency key check. I also wrote regression tests (unit + API) and added monitoring alerts in Grafana. (Result) Checkout failures dropped from ~10% to under 0.5%, support tickets related to payments decreased by 70% within a week, and the fix passed all regression tests with no related incidents for the next 6 months.

Keywords

Covers both frontend and backend analysisUses logging/monitoring to debugExplains root cause clearlyShows structured STAR storytellingIncludes metrics on impact and improvement
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