| Context Gathering |
Candidate refuses to clarify the question or their thought process, and jumps right into diagramming |
Candidate fails to fully clarify the question or their thought process, leading to extensive modifications needing to be made throughout the interview |
Candidate is able to ask some questions to clarify the prompt, but requires hand holding from the Interviewer to fully grasp the right approach |
Candidate is able to clarify the question well, but needs to be prompted to discuss their thought process with the Interviewer before starting |
Candidate is able to proactively collaborate with the Interviewer to understand the problem and walk through their thought process before starting on their solution |
| Service Design |
Candidate is unable to make any progress on the question |
Candidate is able to complete most of the core portion of the question, but is unable to fully implement the solution |
Candidate is able to complete the core portions of the question, but fails to implement/get to all portions |
Candidate is able to complete all portions of the question, but fails to reach implementation of the optimal solution |
Candidate is able to complete all portions of the question in an optimal manner |
| Ambiguity |
Candidate refuses or fails to adapt their solution to new requirements |
Candidate needs some hand holding to fully understand the new requirements, and struggles to ideate on solutions without guidance from the Interviewer |
Candidate needs some hand holding to fully understand the new requirements, but can discuss through their solution for tackling them |
Candidate needs some hand holding to fully understand the new requirements, and can fully implement new extensions on their solution to accommodate |
Candidate is able to rapidly and collaboratively work with the Interviewer to design and implement new extensions on their solution for new requirements |
| Database |
Candidate is unable to pick a database solution |
Candidate might know one database well/one approach to their data model, but is unable to discuss alternatives or optimizations |
Candidate has some knowledge on how to reason about their database/data model choices, but are unable to dive deep on pros/cons/alternatives |
Candidate is able to weigh the pros and cons to their database solution/data model, with prompting from the Interviewer |
Candidate proactively discusses the pros and cons to their database solution/data model |
| Scale |
Candidate is unable to discuss scalability of their solution |
Candidate is able to talk about scaling, but either is inaccurate at points or cannot discuss why they would use a certain scaling optimization vs an alternative one |
Candidate has some knowledge on how to scale their solution, but misses core components (caching, data replication, etc) |
Candidate is able to discuss how they can scale their solution, with prompting from the Interviewer |
Candidate proactively discusses ways they can scale their solution |
| Security |
Candidate is unable to discuss securing their solution |
Candidate has some surface-level about how to secure their system, but cannot dive deeper with the Interviewer to discuss |
Candidate is able to talk about a couple of aspects of securing their system, but have large knowledge gaps during discussions with the Interviewer |
Candidate is able to comprehensively discuss how their solution can be secured, with prompting from the Interviewer |
Candidate is able to proactively discuss how their solution can be secured (cookie auth on endpoints, database security, network security, etc) |
| Consistency |
Candidate is unable to discuss data consistency, either conceptually, or as it pertains to their solution |
Candidate has some surface-level about how consistency patterns work and what their solution might fit, but cannot dive deeper with the Interviewer to discuss |
Candidate is able to provide some basic trade-off discussions around their solutions consistency patterns, but has some foundational knowledge gaps in the area |
Candidate is able to comprehensively explain the tradeoffs and their reasoning for the consistency pattern they’ve established in their solution, with prompting from the interviewer |
Candidate is able to proactively speak on the consistency of their design, and is able to reason through why their consistency model fits the intended solution |