Shopify - Backend Engineer - Phone Screen

Description:
Level: Intermediate / L4 equivalent
Education: Bachelor’s in Computer Science
Years of Experience: 4
Questions Asked:

  1. System Design – Design an API for a feature flag system
  • Discussed endpoints, data schema, toggle logic, rollout strategy
  • Considerations: multi-tenant architecture, audit logging, caching
  1. Technical Scenario – Debug a slow GraphQL query
  • Analyzed logs, N+1 problem, discussed DataLoader and query batching
  1. Behavioural – Describe a time you improved system reliability
  • STAR format: problem, solution (graceful retries, exponential backoff), outcome