Design Kafka-based retry and dead-letter handling
Topics, consumer groups, idempotency keys, DLQ, replay strategy, observability.
Why this matters
Asked by 39% of candidates. Common screening signal before deeper system design and production follow-up rounds.
Frequently followed by
Interview focus
Why
Asked by 39% of candidates. Common screening signal before deeper system design and production follow-up rounds.
Follow-ups
How do you replay DLQ safely without double-processing, Distributed messaging reliability and operational maturity, Ignoring duplicate delivery, poison pills, or consumer lag alerts
Evaluates
Technical depth, Trade-off thinking, Communication, Production awareness