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Solutions Architect Interview Prep

The ultimate guide to Solutions Architect interviews. Developed by FAANG engineers, it offers strategies, real-world questions, and a structured approach to get interview-ready in just a few hours.

32 lessons
3 AI mock interviews
2h
Created by Naeem ul Haq
Solutions Architect Interview Prep
What's included
  • 32 lessons across 10 modules
  • 3 AI mock interviews with scoring rubrics
  • AI Tutor on every lesson
Why this course
  • Ace Solutions Architect InterviewsDemonstrate your ability to navigate complex system design scenarios confidently during interviews.
  • Design Robust ArchitecturesCreate scalable and secure architectures that meet business requirements and technical constraints.
  • Implement Disaster Recovery StrategiesEffectively plan and articulate disaster recovery objectives, including RTO and RPO, in real-world scenarios.
  • Communicate Design Trade-OffsLead discussions on design choices, articulating trade-offs and justifying decisions with evidence.
Who wrote it
Naeem ul Haq
Educative co-founder and CTO. Ex-Microsoft (Azure). Full-Stack, Cloud, Product & Engineering Leadership.

Naeem ul Haq is the co-founder and CTO of Educative, a hands-on learning platform for software engineers. Before co-founding Educative, he spent seven years as a software engineer at Microsoft, where he worked on the Windows Azure Fabric Controller, a core component of what became Microsoft Azure, and on Remote Desktop for Windows Server. Naeem co-founded Educative in 2015 alongside his brother Fahim to make developer education more interactive and accessible. His courses on Educative cover cloud technologies and full-stack web development, drawing directly from his experience building production infrastructure at Microsoft.

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What You'll Learn

  • Guide project discovery with a requirements checklist and assumptions to clarify project goals.
  • Draw baseline diagrams that illustrate trust boundaries and failure domains for system design.
  • Use the Well-Architected Framework as a decision-making tool rather than merely as a checklist.
  • Allocate shared responsibilities across IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS models to ensure comprehensive coverage.
  • Critique design choices by identifying risks, proposing fixes, and providing evidence.
  • Narrate the end-to-end request path, from DNS to private data access, to understand system interactions.

Learning Roadmap

32 Lessons

2.

Lead the Interview: Requirements, Assumptions, and Diagrams

Lead the Interview: Requirements, Assumptions, and Diagrams

Drive discovery with checklist, explicit assumptions, and a bounded baseline diagram.

3.

Defend Quality: Well-Architected and Shared Responsibility

Defend Quality: Well-Architected and Shared Responsibility

3 Lessons

3 Lessons

Defend trade-offs using Well-Architected questions, shared responsibility tables, and validation evidence.

4.

Trace the Request: DNS, Ingress, and Private Access

Trace the Request: DNS, Ingress, and Private Access

4 Lessons

4 Lessons

Trace DNS, ingress, and private endpoints, then debug reachability vs. permission.

5.

Choose Compute and Scale, Then Map Services Across Providers

Choose Compute and Scale, Then Map Services Across Providers

5 Lessons

5 Lessons

Pick compute, size with unit assumptions, surface quotas, and map services cross-provider.

6.

Design State, Delivery, and Resilience Patterns

Design State, Delivery, and Resilience Patterns

6 Lessons

6 Lessons

Choose systems of record, scale with replicas, and harden delivery with idempotency.

7.

Harden the Design: Security, Recovery, and Operations

Harden the Design: Security, Recovery, and Operations

4 Lessons

4 Lessons

Apply identity-first authorization, short-lived workload identity, RTO/RPO recovery, and metrics-led incidents.

8.

Run the Customer Conversation: Cost, Migration, and Objections

Run the Customer Conversation: Cost, Migration, and Objections

3 Lessons

3 Lessons

Estimate directional costs, plan migration waves with rollback, and answer objections with evidence.

9.

Win the Behavioral Round and Run a Full Mock Interview

Win the Behavioral Round and Run a Full Mock Interview

3 Lessons

3 Lessons

Build STAR stories aligned to values, then run a full mock interview.
Certificate of Completion
Showcase your accomplishment by sharing your certificate of completion.
Fahim Ul HaqSolutions Architect Interview PrepFounder & CEO
About this course
WHY I WROTE THIS COURSE
The Solutions Architect Interviews Prep covers more than cloud service knowledge. You have to gather requirements, defend trade-offs, and explain a design to engineers and customers in the same conversation. Memorizing what each service does won’t carry you through that. This course prepares you for each round. I built this course based on my years at Microsoft building cloud infrastructure and my experience co-founding Educative and leading its engineering since 2015. In both roles, the hard part was never naming the right service. It was deciding what the system should do under load, during failure, and within a budget, then explaining why. That is what a solutions architect interview tests, and I’ve seen strong engineers struggle when they jump to components before pinning down the requirements. You’ll learn to lead the interview from the start by defining requirements, stating assumptions, and drawing a baseline diagram. You’ll evaluate design quality using the Well-Architected Framework, trace a request through DNS and ingress, and choose compute services using a cross-cloud mapping of AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud. You’ll then design state, delivery, and resilience patterns and strengthen them for security and recovery. The course closes with cost and migration discussions and behavioral answers, with AI mock interviews along the way to help you practice defending a design out loud. Whether you’re moving into a solutions architect role or targeting a senior cloud position, this course teaches you to lead design discussions and justify every component you put on the diagram.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Naeem ul Haq

Educative co-founder and CTO. Ex-Microsoft (Azure). Full-Stack, Cloud, Product & Engineering Leadership.

Learn more about Naeem

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