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Full Stack Developer Interview Path

Master full stack development interviews with comprehensive real-world use cases. From frontend to backend, databases to deployment - everything you need to land your dream job.

10
Use Cases
50+
Interview Questions
8
Categories
100%
Production-Ready
🛒

Building an E-commerce Platform

AdvancedFull Stack System

Design and implement a complete e-commerce platform with product catalog, shopping cart, checkout, and order management.

🎯 Key Topics to Master:

✓Product Catalog with Search & Filtering
✓Shopping Cart State Management
✓Payment Gateway Integration (Stripe, PayPal)
✓Order Processing Pipeline
✓Inventory Management System
✓User Authentication & Authorization

💡 Common Interview Questions:

  • 1.How do you prevent race conditions during checkout?
  • 2.What strategies ensure cart data persistence across sessions?
  • 3.How do you handle failed payment transactions?
  • 4.How would you implement real-time inventory updates?
  • 5.What caching strategies improve product page performance?

🔧 Technical Concepts:

Database transactions and ACID propertiesOptimistic locking for inventoryRedis for cart session managementEvent-driven order processingElasticsearch for product search
📱

Real-time Social Media Feed

AdvancedReal-time Systems

Build a scalable social media feed with posts, likes, comments, and real-time updates.

🎯 Key Topics to Master:

✓WebSocket/Server-Sent Events
✓Feed Generation Algorithms
✓Notification System
✓Media Upload & CDN Integration
✓Content Moderation Pipeline
✓Infinite Scroll Implementation

💡 Common Interview Questions:

  • 1.How do you generate personalized feeds at scale?
  • 2.What are the tradeoffs of push vs pull feed models?
  • 3.How do you handle millions of concurrent WebSocket connections?
  • 4.How would you implement read receipts efficiently?
  • 5.What database schema supports fast timeline queries?

🔧 Technical Concepts:

Fan-out on write vs fan-out on readRedis pub/sub for notificationsTimeline sharding strategiesImage optimization and lazy loadingRate limiting for API endpoints
🏗️

Microservices Architecture Migration

AdvancedSystem Architecture

Migrate a monolithic application to microservices architecture with proper service boundaries.

🎯 Key Topics to Master:

✓Service Decomposition Strategies
✓API Gateway Design
✓Service Discovery & Load Balancing
✓Distributed Transactions & Saga Pattern
✓Inter-service Communication (REST, gRPC, Message Queues)
✓Database per Service Pattern

💡 Common Interview Questions:

  • 1.How do you identify service boundaries?
  • 2.What challenges arise with distributed transactions?
  • 3.How do you ensure data consistency across services?
  • 4.What monitoring strategies work for microservices?
  • 5.How do you handle cascading failures?

🔧 Technical Concepts:

Domain-driven design principlesCircuit breaker patternEvent sourcing and CQRSService mesh (Istio, Linkerd)Distributed tracing (Jaeger, Zipkin)
🏢

Multi-tenant SaaS Application

AdvancedSaaS Architecture

Design a multi-tenant SaaS platform with tenant isolation, billing, and custom configurations.

🎯 Key Topics to Master:

✓Tenant Isolation Strategies
✓Database Architecture (Shared vs Separate)
✓Custom Domain & Whitelabeling
✓Usage-based Billing System
✓Feature Flags & A/B Testing
✓Multi-region Deployment

💡 Common Interview Questions:

  • 1.How do you ensure data isolation between tenants?
  • 2.What are tradeoffs of shared vs isolated databases?
  • 3.How do you handle tenant-specific customizations?
  • 4.How would you implement fair resource allocation?
  • 5.What strategies enable zero-downtime migrations?

🔧 Technical Concepts:

Row-level security in PostgreSQLTenant context middlewareHorizontal sharding strategiesMetered billing implementationCDN configuration per tenant
🎥

Video Streaming Platform

AdvancedMedia Systems

Build a video streaming service with upload, transcoding, adaptive streaming, and DRM.

🎯 Key Topics to Master:

✓Video Upload & Processing Pipeline
✓Adaptive Bitrate Streaming (HLS, DASH)
✓CDN Integration & Caching
✓Video Transcoding at Scale
✓DRM & Content Protection
✓Analytics & QoS Metrics

💡 Common Interview Questions:

  • 1.How do you handle large video file uploads?
  • 2.What is adaptive bitrate streaming and how does it work?
  • 3.How do you optimize video delivery globally?
  • 4.What are strategies for reducing transcoding costs?
  • 5.How do you measure and improve video quality?

🔧 Technical Concepts:

Multipart upload with presigned URLsFFmpeg for video processingHLS/DASH protocol detailsEdge caching strategiesVideo player buffering algorithms
📝

Collaborative Document Editor

AdvancedReal-time Collaboration

Create a Google Docs-like collaborative editor with real-time synchronization and conflict resolution.

🎯 Key Topics to Master:

✓Operational Transformation (OT)
✓Conflict-free Replicated Data Types (CRDT)
✓Real-time Cursor Sharing
✓Version History & Undo/Redo
✓Permissions & Access Control
✓Offline Mode & Sync

💡 Common Interview Questions:

  • 1.How do you handle concurrent edits from multiple users?
  • 2.What are the differences between OT and CRDT?
  • 3.How do you implement efficient version history?
  • 4.How would you handle network partitions?
  • 5.What data structures optimize text editing operations?

🔧 Technical Concepts:

Yjs or Automerge for CRDTWebSocket bidirectional communicationRope data structure for textDelta-based updatesPresence awareness implementation
✍️

Serverless Blog Platform

IntermediateServerless Architecture

Build a serverless blog platform with static site generation, CMS, and analytics.

🎯 Key Topics to Master:

✓Serverless Functions (AWS Lambda, Vercel)
✓Static Site Generation (SSG) vs Server-Side Rendering (SSR)
✓Headless CMS Integration
✓Image Optimization & Delivery
✓SEO Best Practices
✓Analytics & Performance Monitoring

💡 Common Interview Questions:

  • 1.When should you use SSG vs SSR vs ISR?
  • 2.How do you optimize cold start times?
  • 3.What are the cost considerations for serverless?
  • 4.How do you handle authentication in serverless?
  • 5.What strategies improve Core Web Vitals?

🔧 Technical Concepts:

Incremental Static Regeneration (ISR)Edge functions and middlewareMarkdown processing pipelineImage CDN with automatic optimizationLambda@Edge for dynamic routing
⚡

API Rate Limiting & Throttling System

IntermediateBackend Infrastructure

Implement sophisticated rate limiting and throttling for API endpoints.

🎯 Key Topics to Master:

✓Rate Limiting Algorithms (Token Bucket, Leaky Bucket)
✓Distributed Rate Limiting
✓Quota Management per User/Tier
✓Graceful Degradation
✓Retry Logic & Backoff Strategies
✓Monitoring & Alerting

💡 Common Interview Questions:

  • 1.What are different rate limiting algorithms and their tradeoffs?
  • 2.How do you implement rate limiting in a distributed system?
  • 3.How do you handle rate limit bypassing attempts?
  • 4.What information should be in rate limit error responses?
  • 5.How do you test rate limiting thoroughly?

🔧 Technical Concepts:

Redis for distributed countersSliding window log algorithmMiddleware implementation patternsResponse headers (X-RateLimit-*)Circuit breaker integration
🔍

Search & Autocomplete System

IntermediateSearch Systems

Build a fast search system with autocomplete, typo tolerance, and relevance ranking.

🎯 Key Topics to Master:

✓Full-text Search Implementation
✓Autocomplete with Trie Data Structure
✓Fuzzy Matching & Typo Tolerance
✓Search Relevance Ranking
✓Query Optimization & Caching
✓Search Analytics & Trending

💡 Common Interview Questions:

  • 1.How do you implement efficient autocomplete?
  • 2.What are strategies for typo-tolerant search?
  • 3.How do you rank search results by relevance?
  • 4.How would you handle multi-language search?
  • 5.What caching strategies work best for search?

🔧 Technical Concepts:

Elasticsearch or Algolia integrationInverted index structureN-gram tokenizationTF-IDF scoring algorithmDebouncing for autocomplete requests
⏰

Job Scheduler & Background Processing

IntermediateBackground Systems

Design a distributed job scheduler for background tasks with priorities and retry logic.

🎯 Key Topics to Master:

✓Job Queue Implementation (Bull, Celery)
✓Priority Scheduling
✓Retry Mechanisms & Dead Letter Queues
✓Cron-like Scheduling
✓Worker Pool Management
✓Job Monitoring & Debugging

💡 Common Interview Questions:

  • 1.How do you ensure jobs run exactly once?
  • 2.What happens when a worker crashes mid-job?
  • 3.How do you handle job dependencies?
  • 4.How would you implement priority-based scheduling?
  • 5.What metrics indicate job queue health?

🔧 Technical Concepts:

Message queue patterns (RabbitMQ, Redis)Idempotency keysExponential backoff strategiesWorker autoscalingJob state machine design

📚 How to Use This Path

1. Understand End-to-End Flow

For each use case, trace the complete flow from frontend to backend to database. Understand how components interact.

2. Focus on System Design

Practice drawing architecture diagrams. Be ready to discuss scalability, reliability, and tradeoffs.

3. Build Complete Features

Implement full features from scratch. Deploy them to production. Document challenges and solutions.

4. Master the Stack

Be comfortable with both frontend and backend. Know when to use different technologies and why.

✅ Full Stack Skills Checklist

Frontend

  • • React/Vue/Angular
  • • State Management
  • • Responsive Design
  • • Performance Optimization
  • • Testing (Jest, Cypress)

Backend

  • • RESTful API Design
  • • Authentication & Security
  • • Database Design
  • • Caching Strategies
  • • API Documentation

DevOps

  • • CI/CD Pipelines
  • • Docker & Containers
  • • Cloud Platforms (AWS/GCP/Azure)
  • • Monitoring & Logging
  • • Infrastructure as Code