End-to-end SLO with dependency attribution
Design SLO monitoring for a user-facing service whose request depends on 6 internal microservices and 2 external vendors (a payment processor and an email provider). The product team owns a 99.9% end-to-end SLO but each dependency has its own SLO and its own owner. You need to (a) measure the true user-experienced SLO, (b) attribute budget burn to the dependency that caused it, and (c) catch failures even during zero-traffic periods. Design the SLI measurement, dependency attribution, and synthetic coverage.
What a strong answer looks like
Clarify scale and constraints first. Propose a clean component breakdown, then go deep on the hard parts (data model, bottlenecks, consistency, failure modes) and name the trade-offs you are making.
Clarify4:30 left
Estimate4:30 planned
Design13:30 planned
Deep dive10:30 planned
Failure7:00 planned
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.