Retry amplification from slow upstream
At 14:02 your payments API's p99 latency to the downstream fraud-scoring service jumps from 80ms to 9s, then the fraud service starts returning 503s. Dashboards: fraud-service CPU pinned at 100%, its inbound request rate is 6x normal while your own user traffic is flat, and the fraud service's own upstream (a feature-store Redis) shows a 200ms blip ending at 14:01. Your gateway's retry metric shows attempts climbing from 1.1 to 4.0 per logical request. The fraud team deployed nothing today. How do you triage and mitigate?
What a strong answer looks like
Stop the bleeding first (mitigate), then form hypotheses from real signals. Separate root cause from symptom, communicate status as you go, and close with what prevents a repeat.
0:00 of about 40 min
Which questions mattered is sealed until you submit. Telling you now would just be handing over the edge cases.
Run or narrate your approach, then ask the coach.