Senior SWE: drew a clean Kafka pipeline, rejected for not defending the trade-offs deeply enough
Senior Software Engineer·Onsite·2026
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Uber / SWE
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System design is about defending choices, not just drawing boxes. At senior level the diagram is table stakes and the interview is the five-whys on every decision.
Why Kafka over a simpler queue — this is the question that gets everyone at senior level. The answer has to be grounded in the specific constraints, not "Kafka is what you use for streaming."