What problem does it solve? Interviewers and hiring teams often struggle to design backend interview questions that go beyond trivia and actually test architecture judgment, production troubleshooting experience, and trade-off reasoning. This Skill provides a structured question-generation framework for backend engineering interviews that works regardless of the candidate's language or framework. ## Core Features & Use Cases - Topic Ladders: Covers 13 backend domains including cache consistency, database sharding, message queues, distributed transactions, API design, reliability patterns, observability, rate limiting, microservices, hot-key handling, storage selection, release management, and security, each with a progression from fundamentals to production scenarios. - Good vs Bad Question Patterns: Contrasts trivia-style questions with scenario-based questions that include concrete metrics (QPS, P99, hit rates) and require candidates to reason through failures and trade-offs. - Resume Hooks: Maps resume keywords like "high concurrency", Redis, Kafka, or sharding to targeted follow-up probes that verify real production experience with quantified evidence. - Use Case: When a candidate's resume mentions Redis and microservices, generate a scenario question about a cache hit rate dropping from 98% to 60%, then follow up on their sharding key choice and cross-shard query handling. ## Quick Start Load this skill when the role or resume involves backend development, then generate scenario-based interview questions with concrete metrics for the candidate's claimed experience.
