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Senior Backend Engineer Pack

Master distributed architecture, transactional isolation (MVCC), stream backpressure, failure mechanics, and resilience.

Senior backend interviews evaluate candidates on architectural mechanics, failure modes, trade-off defensibility, and production incident resolution. This pack moves beyond textbook answers into real production realities: how MVCC handles write skew, why Kafka rebalances cause cascading lag, how circuit breakers protect downstream dependencies, and how stream backpressure stops Node.js processes from running out of heap memory.

Target AudienceEngineers with 3-7 years of experience aiming for Senior Backend (L5) roles at tier-1 tech firms.
Targeted Companies
UberGoogleAmazonMetaNetflixCoinbase
4-6 WeeksPlan Duration
4Curriculum Modules
14Curated Questions
8Milestones

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Structured Syllabus

Curriculum Modules (Preview Mode)

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01

OS Kernel, Sockets & Non-Blocking Async I/O

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epoll, kqueue, file descriptors, TCP buffers, and zero-copy transfers.

~8h
Target Competency & Objective:Understand how the Linux kernel multiplexes network sockets, how send and receive socket buffers work, and how Node.js streams interface with OS file descriptors.

Core Technical Concepts Tested

Linux epoll (edge-triggered vs level-triggered) and BSD kqueueFile descriptor limits (ulimit -n) and socket exhaustionTCP Window sizing, Nagle's algorithm (TCP_NODELAY), and Delayed ACKsZero-copy operations: sendfile() and splice()
What Fails in Production (Triage Scenarios):
  • Socket descriptor exhaustion (EMFILE) crashing web servers during traffic spikes
  • High p99 latency caused by TCP Nagle interacting poorly with Delayed ACKs
  • Backlog queue overflow (listen(backlog)) silently dropping SYN packets under surge

Module Milestones (0 / 2)

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02

Deep Database Internals: MVCC, WAL & Locking

Multi-Version Concurrency Control, Write-Ahead Logging, deadlocks, and isolation levels.

~10h

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03

Streams, Backpressure & Memory Heap Profiling

HighWaterMark mechanics, V8 heap snapshots, buffer allocations, and garbage collection.

~8h

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04

Resilience Engineering & Fault Tolerance

Circuit breakers, bulkheads, rate limiters, and graceful degradation.

~8h

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Module Outline

01. OS Kernel, Sockets & Non-Blocking Async I/OPreview02. Deep Database Internals: MVCC, WAL & LockingLocked03. Streams, Backpressure & Memory Heap ProfilingLocked04. Resilience Engineering & Fault ToleranceLocked

Specific Pack Deliverables

  • Rigorous understanding of ACID isolation levels (Read Committed, Repeatable Read, Serializable)
  • Production stream backpressure and memory heapdump diagnosis
  • Designing distributed saga orchestrations vs choreography for microservices
  • Resilience patterns: circuit breakers, bulkheads, rate limiters, and exponential backoff with jitter
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