Dependency latency spike
Your real-time inference service enriches each request by calling a third-party 'identity-risk' API synchronously to build one feature before scoring. At 12:40 your service's p99 latency triples and error rate hits 4%. Tracing shows the time and errors are all in the outbound call to the third-party API, which is returning slow responses and intermittent 503s; their status page later confirms a partial outage. Your own model and feature store are healthy. 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 30 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.