Interview prep checklist for senior engineering roles

For senior+ engineering roles, the interview loop typically covers four buckets: coding, system design, behavioural, and a final "why us" conversation. Each rewards different prep styles. Here's a four-week plan that compounds.

Week 1: coding warm-up

Two LeetCode-medium problems per day. Focus on patterns: two-pointer, sliding window, BFS/DFS, dynamic programming, intervals. Solve each problem twice — once cold, once after reviewing the solution. The second solve teaches you the pattern faster than 10 cold solves.

Week 2: system design fundamentals

Read "Designing Data-Intensive Applications" (chapters 5–9), then practice three classic system design problems: a URL shortener, a Twitter-like feed, and a rate limiter. For each, write down: APIs, storage choice, sharding/replication, hot path optimisations, and one explicit trade-off.

Week 3: behavioural with the STAR framework

Write down 6–8 stories using the STAR framework (Situation, Task, Action, Result). Cover: a project you led end-to-end, a conflict with a peer, a time you missed a deadline, a time you mentored someone, a critical bug you fixed in production, a controversial technical decision. Practice telling each in 90 seconds.

Week 4: company-specific deep dive

For each company you're interviewing with, study their public engineering blog, recent press releases, and at least one open-source project. Bring two specific questions to every conversation. "Why this company" is a culture-fit signal — recruiters reject candidates who give generic answers.