Clarify requirements and constraints first, then sketch a high-level design before diving into code. Implement the core classes or components with clean interfaces, and explicitly discuss trade-offs (e.g., consistency vs. availability, latency vs. throughput) as you go.
Pro tip: At Citadel, interviewers care deeply about correctness and edge cases under scale. Before coding, state your assumptions and ask about expected scale, then write code that handles concurrency and failure scenarios gracefully.
Ask questions to understand functional and non-functional requirements, scale, latency, consistency, and failure expectations. Confirm the scope and any specific technologies or constraints.
Sketch the main components, data flow, and interfaces. Identify key entities, services, and storage. Discuss potential bottlenecks and how you'll address them.
Implement the core logic with clean, modular code. Define classes, methods, and data structures. Handle edge cases and concurrency if relevant.
Explain why you chose this design over alternatives. Discuss trade-offs in performance, scalability, maintainability, and cost.
Describe how you would test the system, including unit tests, integration tests, and load testing. Mention monitoring and observability.
AI-generated suggestions, not part of the candidate's original notes. May be inaccurate — verify before relying on them.