Explain distributed tracing and debugging a cross-service latency spike
Trace IDs, spans, critical path, dependency map, bottleneck hypothesis.
Why this matters
Asked by 59% of candidates. Common screening signal before deeper system design and production follow-up rounds.
Frequently followed by
Interview focus
Why
Asked by 59% of candidates. Common screening signal before deeper system design and production follow-up rounds.
Follow-ups
Which SLIs would you alert on, Systems thinking and observability in microservices, Guessing without trace data or ignoring downstream timeouts
Evaluates
Technical depth, Trade-off thinking, Communication, Production awareness