This felt like a lot to cover and I kept second-guessing how much detail they actually wanted.
Structure your answer as a chronological walkthrough of the entire workflow, from environment setup to CI configuration, emphasizing reproducibility and automation. Highlight how each step supports collaboration and code quality, and mention specific tools and commands you use. Conclude by tying your workflow back to the role's requirements, such as testing ML code and integrating with CI.
Pro tip: Demonstrate maturity by mentioning how you handle common pitfalls, such as dependency conflicts or flaky tests, and how you ensure your workflow is reproducible for reviewers. Also, note that you version control not just code but also environment files (e.g., requirements.txt, environment.yml) to make the project easy to set up.
Describe how you set up your IDE (e.g., VS Code, PyCharm) and SDK (e.g., Python, Node.js) with necessary plugins and extensions. Mention using virtual environments or containers for isolation.
Explain cloning the repo, creating a feature branch with a descriptive name, and following branching conventions (e.g., GitFlow, GitHub Flow).
Walk through building the project from scratch (e.g., installing dependencies, compiling) and writing/running unit tests locally. Mention test frameworks (e.g., pytest, unittest) and how you ensure tests pass before committing.
Describe your commit strategy (e.g., atomic commits with clear messages) and pushing to the remote branch. Mention using pre-commit hooks for linting or formatting.
Explain opening a pull request with a detailed description, and configuring CI (e.g., GitHub Actions, CircleCI) to run tests on each push. Mention how you handle CI failures and iterate.
AI-generated suggestions, not part of the candidate's original notes. May be inaccurate — verify before relying on them.