Interview question bank

Status: Complete for Waves 1–6. Last reviewed 2026-08-29.

This page is an index and a set of curated mock interviews. Questions live in one canonical topical bank so their wording, stable ID, and example answer stay together.

Canonical banks

• PHP questions
• Laravel questions
• Backend-engineering questions
• Database and distributed-systems questions
• Senior engineering, architecture, and leadership questions
• Behavioral and experience questions

Canonical banks own the wording, stable ID, and keyed example answer for reusable interview questions. Frontend IDs remain in the Laravel bank and AI IDs remain in the backend-engineering bank, so optional topics do not need duplicate banks. Scenario collections have a different contract: a stable descriptive anchor, evidence or constraints, a candidate task, and a discussion guide; they test synthesis and may link back to canonical practice without copying it. For response structure, see answer frameworks.

Mock interview set 1 — Laravel foundations

Use four questions for a 30-minute screen or all six for a deeper session. Do not read the collapsible examples until after answering aloud.

1. LARAVEL-LIFECYCLE-01 — Trace a Laravel web request
2. LARAVEL-LIFECYCLE-02 — Explain zero-configuration resolution
3. LARAVEL-LIFECYCLE-03 — Separate provider registration from booting
4. LARAVEL-LIFECYCLE-04 — Explain what a facade invokes
5. LARAVEL-LIFECYCLE-05 — Diagnose cross-request state leakage
6. LARAVEL-LIFECYCLE-06 — Choose injection, a facade, or service location

Mock interview set 2 — Laravel routing boundaries

Use questions 1–4 for a framework screen; add 5–6 for production diagnosis and design depth.

1. LARAVEL-ROUTING-01 — Trace route selection and dispatch
2. LARAVEL-ROUTING-02 — Explain final middleware order
3. LARAVEL-ROUTING-03 — Explain implicit model binding
4. LARAVEL-ROUTING-04 — Separate scoped binding from authorization
5. LARAVEL-ROUTING-05 — Diagnose a production-only routing failure
6. LARAVEL-ROUTING-06 — Choose a boundary mechanism

Mock interview set 3 — Laravel trust boundaries

Use questions 1–3 for framework precision; add 4–6 for senior security and failure reasoning.

1. LARAVEL-BOUNDARIES-01 — Trace a Form Request
2. LARAVEL-BOUNDARIES-02 — Separate validation from invariants
3. LARAVEL-BOUNDARIES-03 — Choose a gate or policy
4. LARAVEL-BOUNDARIES-04 — Design tenant isolation
5. LARAVEL-BOUNDARIES-05 — Diagnose an unsafe queued export
6. LARAVEL-BOUNDARIES-06 — Choose denial semantics

Mock interview set 4 — Complexity and bottlenecks

Use questions 1–3 for core reasoning; add 4–6 for production diagnosis and senior trade-offs.

1. BACKEND-FUNDAMENTALS-01 — Explain why Big O is not a stopwatch
2. BACKEND-FUNDAMENTALS-02 — Replace repeated scans without changing semantics
3. BACKEND-FUNDAMENTALS-03 — Choose a structure from the workload
4. BACKEND-FUNDAMENTALS-04 — Diagnose an apparently linear endpoint
5. BACKEND-FUNDAMENTALS-05 — Reason about time, space, and boundaries
6. BACKEND-FUNDAMENTALS-06 — Prove the real bottleneck

Mock interview set 5 — Senior engineering decisions

Use questions 1–3 for design and delivery judgment; add 4–6 for operational leadership and a complete system-design discussion.

1. ARCH-DESIGN-06 — Decide whether a repository adds value over Eloquent
2. ARCH-DDD-06 — Decide and migrate a service extraction
3. OPS-DEPLOY-05 — Decide between rollback and roll-forward
4. OPS-OBSERVABILITY-05 — Lead and communicate an incident
5. LEADERSHIP-DECISIONS-02 — Calibrate code-review feedback
6. ARCH-SYSTEMS-05 — Design multi-tenant SaaS

Mock interview set 6 — Practical PHP and Laravel

Use questions 1–3 for language and framework precision; add 4–6 for data access, tests, and retry behavior.

1. PHP-TYPES-01 — Explain strict typing from the call site
2. PHP-ARRAYS-02 — Diagnose a JSON shape change
3. LARAVEL-FOUNDATIONS-01 — Place a Laravel use case across boundaries
4. LARAVEL-RELATIONSHIPS-04 — Diagnose a hidden N+1
5. LARAVEL-TESTING-04 — Expose a queue-fake blind spot
6. LARAVEL-QUEUES-03 — Make a retried side effect idempotent

Mock interview set 7 — Data, reliability, and diagnosis

Use the four canonical questions for a 30-minute round; add one anchored incident for a 45–60 minute evidence-led session.

1. DATA-RELATIONAL-04 — Diagnose a query plan
2. DATA-CACHE-02 — Prevent a cache stampede
3. DATA-DELIVERY-04 — Recover an ambiguous external outcome
4. BACKEND-PERFORMANCE-01 — Diagnose rising p99
5. Debugging scenario — Deadlock retry plus a duplicate job effect

Mock interview set 8 — Code review and delivery

Use one review exercise for a 25-minute pass; add the canonical delivery and review questions for a 45-minute debrief.

1. Code-review scenario — Tenant-scoped CRUD
2. Code-review scenario — Import job retries
3. Code-review scenario — Old-worker migration
4. LEADERSHIP-DECISIONS-02 — Calibrate code-review feedback
5. OPS-DEPLOY-03 — Evolve schema, events, configuration, and assets

Mock interview set 9 — Full-stack frontend

Use questions 1–3 for Laravel rendering boundaries; add 4–6 for browser races, credentials, accessibility, assets, and test evidence.

1. LARAVEL-FRONTEND-01 — Render a safe Blade form
2. LARAVEL-FRONTEND-02 — Trace and secure a Livewire interaction
3. LARAVEL-FRONTEND-03 — Trace an Inertia navigation
4. LARAVEL-FRONTEND-04 — Prevent a stale browser response
5. LARAVEL-FRONTEND-05 — Choose browser state and credential storage
6. LARAVEL-FRONTEND-06 — Design frontend production confidence

Mock interview set 10 — AI-assisted Laravel development

Use questions 1–3 for core mechanism and security; add 4–6 for agent risk, evaluation, and evidence-led adoption.

1. BACKEND-AI-01 — Separate model knowledge from supplied context
2. BACKEND-AI-02 — Choose prompting, retrieval, fine-tuning, or a tool
3. BACKEND-AI-03 — Secure a model tool call
4. BACKEND-AI-04 — Threat-model an MCP-connected coding agent
5. BACKEND-AI-05 — Design an eval for AI-assisted Laravel review
6. BACKEND-AI-06 — Adopt an AI coding workflow with evidence

Scenario practice

Scenarios are not extra question-bank prompts. For a short round, choose one debugging or review packet, spend 10–15 minutes on a closed-guide first pass, and use another 10–15 minutes for challenge and debrief. For a system-design or implementation rehearsal, allow 45–90 minutes, define scope and evidence before building, and stop at an explicit decision record or smallest credible slice. Do not open discussion guides or owning pages until the first pass is complete; afterward, use their canonical links to target the gaps exposed.

• Debugging scenarios
• Code-review scenarios
• Deliberately flawed checkout review
• System-design and implementation scenarios
• Practical coding rounds

Mock interview set 11 — Regular-role mixed interview

Use questions 1–4 for a 35-minute discussion; add the practical exercise for a 60–75 minute session. Ask the experience follow-up after the related technical answer.

1. PHP-TYPES-02 — Design a precise boundary type
2. LARAVEL-BOUNDARIES-02 — Separate validation from invariants, then choose and frame evidence
3. LARAVEL-TESTING-01 — Build confidence at the right boundaries
4. Own a failure and its consequences
5. Laravel tenant-scoped update exercise

Mock interview set 12 — Senior-role mixed interview

Use the first five prompts for a 50-minute interview; add the SQL exercise for a 75–90 minute session.

1. ARCH-DDD-06 — Decide and migrate a service extraction
2. Navigate a technical disagreement
3. DATA-DELIVERY-04 — Recover an ambiguous external outcome
4. Make progress under ambiguity
5. Exercise ethical judgment
6. SQL inventory-reservation exercise

Mock interview set 13 — Behavioral and real-world stories

Use four prompts for a 30-minute behavioral round. Rotate the remaining prompts in later practice rather than forcing one prepared story into every question. Do not open the examples or candidate notes until after answering aloud.

1. Replan under deadline pressure
2. Respond to a production incident
3. Act on difficult feedback
4. Resolve a stakeholder or user conflict
5. Learn an unfamiliar area quickly
6. Balance technical debt and product delivery
7. Recover a cross-team dependency
8. Delegate consequential work

Questions for the employer

• Which correctness or operational problems consume the most engineering time?
• How are architecture decisions made and revisited?
• What does ownership include after code reaches production?
• How are tests, static analysis, deployment, and rollback handled?
• What distinguishes strong performance at regular and senior levels here?