General

General expectation from java service developer is that they should be strong in Data structure ,
fundamental, problem solving and they should know micro services, DevOps , messaging services and
cloud ,other expectation are when complex problem /use case comes in front of them they should
attempt and try to solve the problem by applying their design /problem solving skills, the idea of asking
complex question is to see are developer attempting to solve the problem which they have never
solved , if they are trying to solve what approach are they taking , how are they breaking a complex
problem into small problem and applying design principle and pattern to solve it.

Sometimes, we are asking open ended question, the purpose of asking open ended question is,
developer should answer based on his past experience, if developer answers in totality with confidence
the probability of having hand-son become very high

Sometimes we are asking the ambiguous questions, the idea of asking ambiguous question is to check if
developer is asking questions to clarify the requirement if requirement is not clear and then try to solve
the problem instead of without understanding the requirement jumping on the solution.

Problem Solving

The idea of asking problem solving is to evaluate developer design skills , sometimes client not
expecting concrete implementation , they want to understand what approach developer taking to
solved the design problem , are they giving up or the attempting to solve the problem

Fundamental

In fundamental client expecting , developer should know purpose of all the keyword , static binding ,
dynamic binding , overloading rule , overriding rule in terms of access modifier, exception handling,
impact of dynamic linking on performance , how to improve performance by using final keyword ,
what’s default implementation of hash code and equal , cloning, immutability, advantage of
immutability , importance of final in security , Exception handling rules

Data Structure

In Data structure the expectation is developer should know all basic data structure and how those basic
data structure internally working , based on use case developer should answer question which data
structure is best fit for given use case , how hashing concept is working in hash set and map , how to
improve map /set performance by optimizing hash code , what are time complexity of different
operation on data structure , how re sizing is happening in data structure , how to use comparable
comparator , how to implement different sorting algorithm . How to optimize data structure by
changing the capacity and load factor, could able to implement one data structure by using another,
could able to answer how to implement data structure

Concurrent API

developer should know how concurrent hash map internally managing a lock how segmentation is
working ,how many thread can work on concurrent hash map , benefit of using concurrent hash map
over hash table and synchronize map , what kind of business use case can be implemented by using
concurrent hash map , how blocking queue is working what kind of problem can be solved by using
blocking queue , when we should use linked blocking queue and when array blocking queue what’s
implementation of blocking queue , how to use blocking queue in inter thread communication, what’s
fail safe iterator

how to implement thread pool , what’s advantage of thread pool , how many type of thread pool do we
have , how we can use executor service , how to use executor service to implement parallel /pipe line
processing. , what kind of business problem can be solved by cyclic barrier and count down latch and
how its working, how to use semaphore, what’s CAS concept (Compare and set), how atomic API is
working internally

Multithreading

the expectation here is developer should know basic of multithreading , should know how wait , notify ,
sleep , join is working , how locking is working , what’s class label lock , what’s object lock, how to
implement inter thread communication by using wait and notify , how volatile is working , how happen
before concept is working in terms of volatile , how to implement thread pool in java 4 , how important
is immutability in multithreading , what’s code can create deadlock , what code can create starvation,

Serialization

Developer should know purpose of serialization, purpose of serial version UID, if serial version UID is not
define how JVM generating it, how to customize serialization behavior, how to serialize transient
variable how to improve performance by customizing serialization behavior

Memory management

Developer should know java memory model , should know heap , how garbage collection is working ,
how to optimize memory , should aware where class meta data storing in memory , should know reason
of Perm gen Exception , reason of Out of memory exception , should aware how to do memory profiling
, how to identify which code consuming memory

Design Pattern

Developer should know at least 2 to 3 design pattern thoroughly, while explaining use case
implementation should use some of the design pattern , must know best way of implementing singleton
pattern , factory pattern, strategy pattern, builder pattern, flyweight pattern, decorator and adapter
pattern. Should know at-least 1 example of these patterns implementations from JDK.

Design Principle
Developer should know SOLID concept very well, whenever explaining solution design principle should
reflect in his solution, how important code for interface concept is

Object oriented Concept

Developer should know Encapsulation, Polymorphic, Composition, Inheritance, when should use
inheritance when should we use composition.
Database

Developer should able to write some of query on join and aggregation, should aware index, type of
index and how indexing is working, should aware all key

Spring

Knows basics of spring like dependency injection (inversion of control), auto wiring (both XML and
annotations), bean life cycle, profiling, transaction management and externalization of properties.
Rest

Basic understanding of REST principles (Uniform interface, Stateless interactions, Cacheable, Client-
Server, Layered System, Code on Demand. HTTP protocol (HTTP methods, Headers, Error codes) and
concept of resources for REST.

Micro-Services

What is MicroServices? How it is different from Monolithic architecture? What are the advantages in
Micro services w.r.t Monolithic architecture? Small application using Spring boot.

With 13 years of Java experience, you're already a senior developer/architect-level candidate. To land
a high-paying job (e.g., at top tech companies, FAANG, or high-growth startups), you need to
demonstrate deep expertise in Java, system design, distributed systems, and modern cloud-native
architectures.
Here’s what you should focus on for next-level interviews:
1. Advanced Java & JVM Internals
• JVM Architecture: GC tuning (G1, ZGC, Shenandoah), JIT, bytecode manipulation
• Concurrency: CompletableFuture, ForkJoinPool, StampedLock, reactive programming (Project
Loom – Virtual Threads)
• Performance Optimization: Memory leaks, thread contention, benchmarking (JMH)
• New Java Features: Records, Sealed Classes, Pattern Matching, Foreign Function API (FFI)
2. System Design & Scalability
• Low-Latency Systems: Caching strategies (Redis, Memcached), CDN, edge computing
• Distributed Systems: CAP theorem, consensus algorithms (Raft, Paxos), distributed transactions
(Saga, 2PC)
• Microservices: Service mesh (Istio, Linkerd), API gateways (Kong, Apigee), event-driven
architectures (Kafka, Pulsar)
• Database Scaling: Sharding, replication, NoSQL vs. NewSQL (Cassandra, MongoDB, CockroachDB)
3. Cloud & DevOps (Must for High-Paying Roles)
• Cloud Platforms: AWS (Lambda, EKS, Aurora), GCP (Pub/Sub, Spanner), Azure (AKS, CosmosDB)
• Kubernetes: Helm, Operators, Service Mesh (Istio), K8s networking
• Infrastructure as Code (IaC): Terraform, Pulumi, Crossplane
• Observability: OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, Grafana, ELK stack
4. Architecture & Best Practices
• Domain-Driven Design (DDD): Bounded contexts, event sourcing, CQRS
• Hexagonal/Clean Architecture: Separation of concerns, dependency inversion
• Security: OAuth2/OIDC, JWT, mTLS, secrets management (Vault)
5. Soft Skills & Leadership
• Tech Leadership: Mentoring, RFC-driven development, architecture reviews
 • Stakeholder Management: Aligning tech decisions with business goals
• Interviewing Skills: Articulating trade-offs clearly (e.g., eventual consistency vs. strong consistency)
6. Coding & Problem-Solving (Even for Senior Roles)
• Leetcode/HackerRank: Focus on Graphs, DP, System Design (e.g., Design TinyURL)
• Concurrency Challenges: Thread-safe caching, deadlock prevention
• Real-world OOP: Designing extensible, maintainable systems
7. Emerging Trends (Bonus Points)
• AI/ML Integration: Java + TensorFlow, ONNX, LangChain
• Blockchain: Smart contracts (Hyperledger), Web3
• WebAssembly (WASM): Running Java on WASM (GraalVM Native Image)
Interview Prep Strategy
✔ Mock Interviews: Practice with Pramp, Interviewing.io
✔ System Design Books: "Designing Data-Intensive Applications" (Kleppmann)
✔ Java Deep Dive: "Java Concurrency in Practice" (Goetz), "Effective Java" (Bloch)