IntermediateLEADERSHIP
As a mid-level developer asked to mentor junior engineers and influence architectural direction, how would you balance hands-on execution, strategic technical decisions, and stakeholder communication?
Full Stack Developer
General

Sample Answer

In my last team, I was a mid-level dev asked to mentor 3 juniors while we were rebuilding a legacy monolith into services. I blocked my week into themes: 60% hands-on delivery, 25% architecture/tech debt, 15% stakeholder communication and mentoring. Practically, that meant pairing with juniors on the highest-risk stories, then having them implement follow-up tasks solo with my async code reviews. Over 6 months, their PR rework rate dropped by about 40% and they started owning small services end-to-end. On the architecture side, I created lightweight RFC docs (2–3 pages) for decisions around API boundaries and data models, then walked product and QA through impact in a 30-minute session. That kept everyone aligned without slowing delivery. The result was we shipped the first slice of the new architecture 3 sprints earlier than planned, cut deployment incidents by ~30%, and grew the juniors into reliable feature owners.

Keywords

Time-boxing across execution, architecture, and mentoringUsing pairing and structured reviews to grow juniorsLightweight RFCs and clear impact framing for stakeholdersMeasuring outcomes: rework rate, incidents, timeline improvements