Armada·Software Engineer·Technical Phone Screen·Intermediate

Intermediate

May 2026

Summary

Coding round for a Software Engineer role at Armada. About 45 minutes, one problem focused on calling two APIs, handling pagination, and cleaning up bad data in the responses. Nothing algorithmically tricky, just practical HTTP and parsing work.

Questions Asked (1)

Given two API endpoints, write code that fetches data from both, extracts specific fields, handles pagination across all pages, and defensively deals with None values and empty strings in the responses.

API & IntegrationsTechnical Trade-offs

Author's notes

Felt pretty manageable at first and it mostly was, but pagination tripped me up a bit.

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AI HintsAI Generated

Suggested Approach

Start by clarifying the requirements and assumptions, then outline a modular design with separate functions for fetching, paginating, and extracting data. Emphasize defensive coding practices like using safe accessors and validators, and discuss trade-offs such as concurrency vs. sequential pagination.

Pro tip: Mention that you would write unit tests with mocked API responses covering edge cases like None, empty strings, and missing fields to ensure robustness. This shows you think about maintainability and reliability beyond just writing code.

1. Clarify requirements and assumptions

Ask about authentication, rate limits, pagination style (cursor vs. offset), and expected data volume. Confirm the specific fields to extract and how to handle missing data.

2. Design modular functions

Plan separate functions for fetching a single page, iterating through all pages, and extracting/transforming data. This separation makes the code testable and maintainable.

3. Implement pagination logic

Use a loop or recursion to fetch all pages, checking for a 'next' link or page token. Handle potential infinite loops with a max page limit or timeout.

4. Apply defensive extraction

Use safe access methods (e.g., dict.get with defaults) and validate values, replacing None or empty strings with sensible defaults or skipping records.

5. Discuss error handling and trade-offs

Explain how you would handle network errors, retries, and partial failures. Discuss trade-offs between sequential and concurrent fetching, and between strict validation and lenient parsing.

Key Points to Mention

Pagination handling: cursor-based vs. offset-based, and how to detect the last page.
Defensive coding: using safe accessors, type checks, and default values for None/empty strings.
Error handling: retries with exponential backoff, handling HTTP errors, and logging.
Concurrency: whether to fetch pages in parallel (if API allows) and how to manage rate limits.
Data extraction: mapping API fields to internal schema, and handling nested structures.
Testing: mocking API responses to cover edge cases and ensure reliability.

AI-generated suggestions, not part of the candidate's original notes. May be inaccurate — verify before relying on them.