Atlassian Interview Questions
Creators of JIRA, Confluence, and Trello. Backend interviews test Java, Spring Boot, microservices architecture, Kubernetes, and system design for collaboration tools. Code quality and SOLID principles are assessed seriously.
#1Explain the SOLID principles.
#2How does HashMap work internally?
#3What is the difference between HashMap and ConcurrentHashMap?
#4Explain Java Memory Model: Heap, Stack, and Metaspace.
#5What is the volatile keyword in Java?
#6What is the difference between synchronized and ReentrantLock?
#7What is a deadlock and how do you prevent it?
#8Explain the Stream API and intermediate vs terminal operations.
#9What is garbage collection? How does G1 differ from ZGC?
#10What is the Java ClassLoader hierarchy?
#11What are Java records (Java 16+)?
#12What is the Executor framework and when would you use it over raw Threads?
#13What is the difference between composition and inheritance?
#14What is a marker interface? Give examples.
#15What are the design patterns most commonly asked in Java interviews?
#16How do you implement a Singleton in Java correctly?
#17What is the contract between equals() and hashCode()?
#18What is the difference between fail-fast and fail-safe iterators?
#19What is CopyOnWriteArrayList and when should you use it?
#20How does PriorityQueue work and when would you use it?
#21What is the happens-before relationship in Java Memory Model?
#22What is the difference between sleep(), wait(), and yield()?
#23What are atomic classes (AtomicInteger, AtomicReference)? How do they work?
#24What is a CountDownLatch vs CyclicBarrier?
#25What is a ThreadLocal and what are its dangers?
#26What is a CompletableFuture and how does it improve async programming?
#27What are virtual threads (Project Loom, Java 21)?
#28How does the JIT (Just-In-Time) compiler work?
#29What is the difference between minor GC, major GC, and full GC?
#30What tools do you use to diagnose JVM memory issues?
#31What is the String pool and how does string interning work?
#32What is type erasure in Java generics?
#33What is the difference between <? extends T> and <? super T>?
#34What are sealed classes (Java 17)?
#35What is pattern matching for instanceof (Java 16)?
#36What is the difference between map() and flatMap() in streams?
#37What is the difference between Comparable and Comparator?
#38What is Stream.collect() and what are common Collectors?
#39What is try-with-resources and how does it work?
#40What is exception chaining and why is it important?
#41What is the difference between Java IO and NIO?
#42What is Java Serialization and what are its pitfalls?
#43What is reflection in Java and when is it used?
#44What is the difference between deep copy and shallow copy?
#45What is autoboxing and unboxing? What are the performance implications?
#46What are enums in Java and what advanced features do they support?
#47What is the difference between static and instance initializer blocks?
#48What are Java modules (Java 9 — JPMS)?
#49What is the difference between an inner class, static nested class, and anonymous class?
#50What are the new switch expressions (Java 14)?
#51What is the difference between Runnable, Callable, and Future?
#52How do you handle NullPointerException in Java?
#53What is the difference between Deque and Queue?
#54What is a WeakHashMap and when would you use it?
#55What is the difference between checked and unchecked exceptions — best practices for APIs?
#56What is the difference between interface default methods and abstract class methods?
#57What are the best practices for writing clean Java code?
#58What is a race condition and how do you prevent it?
#59What is the difference between HashMap.computeIfAbsent() and getOrDefault()?
#60What is the purpose of the transient keyword?
#61What is method hiding in Java?
#62What are the Java 8 Date/Time APIs and why were they introduced?
#63What is the difference between HashMap.put() and HashMap.putIfAbsent()?
#64What is an immutable class and how do you create one?
#65What is the covariant return type in Java?
#66What is the difference between Predicate.and(), Predicate.or(), and Predicate.negate()?
#67What is the Observer pattern and how is it implemented in Java?
#68What is the Strategy pattern in Java?
#69What is String.intern() and when should you use it?
#70What are the key differences between Java 8, 11, 17, and 21?
#71What is auto-configuration in Spring Boot?
#72Explain @Transactional and its propagation levels.
#73How does Spring Boot handle exceptions globally?
#74What is the difference between @Bean and @Component?
#75Explain Spring Bean scopes.
#76What is Spring AOP and where is it used?
#77What is circular dependency and how do you fix it?
#78How does Spring Security authentication work?
#79What is @Async in Spring Boot and how does it work?
#80What is Spring Data JPA and how does it simplify data access?
#81How does Spring Boot externalized configuration work?
#82What is Spring Cache Abstraction and how do you use it?
#83How do you write integration tests in Spring Boot?
#84What is the Spring ApplicationContext and how does it differ from BeanFactory?
#85What is a BeanPostProcessor and when would you use it?
#86What is the @PostConstruct and @PreDestroy lifecycle?
#87What is @Qualifier and when do you need it?
#88How does Spring Boot auto-configuration work under the hood?
#89What is @ConfigurationProperties and how does it differ from @Value?
#90What is Spring Boot's embedded server and how do you switch from Tomcat to Undertow?
#91What is Spring's @EventListener and ApplicationEvent?
#92What is @Conditional and how do you create custom conditions?
#93How do you implement request validation in Spring Boot?
#94What is ResponseEntity and when should you use it?
#95What is content negotiation in Spring MVC?
#96How do you implement pagination and sorting in Spring Boot?
#97What is HATEOAS and does Spring Boot support it?
#98How do you version a REST API in Spring Boot?
#99What is the difference between findById() and getById() in Spring Data JPA?
#100What are JPA entity states (Transient, Managed, Detached, Removed)?
#101What is the difference between @OneToMany with fetch LAZY vs EAGER?
#102What is Hibernate first-level cache and second-level cache?
#103What is the Open Session in View (OSIV) pattern and why is it controversial?
#104What is a Spring Data JPA Specification and when would you use it?
#105What is CSRF and how does Spring Security handle it?
#106How do you implement JWT authentication in Spring Boot?
#107What is the difference between @Secured, @PreAuthorize, and @RolesAllowed?
#108What is CORS and how do you configure it in Spring Boot?
#109What is OAuth2 and how does Spring Security support it?
#110What is MockMvc and how do you use it?
#111What is @MockBean vs @Mock in Spring Boot tests?
#112What is @DataJpaTest and how does it differ from @SpringBootTest?
#113What is Testcontainers and how does it improve Spring Boot tests?
#114What is Micrometer and how does it integrate with Spring Boot Actuator?
#115How do you implement custom health indicators in Spring Boot?
#116How do you implement distributed tracing in Spring Boot?
#117What is graceful shutdown in Spring Boot and how do you configure it?
#118What is a Filter vs HandlerInterceptor in Spring Boot?
#119What is @ControllerAdvice and how does it work?
#120What is Spring WebFlux and how does it differ from Spring MVC?
#121What is Spring's @Scheduled and how do you configure it?
#122What happens during Spring Boot startup?
#123What is Spring Boot's fat JAR and how is it structured?
#124What is Spring Retry and how do you use it?
#125What is Spring Integration vs Spring Batch?
#126What is @Transactional readOnly = true and what does it optimize?
#127What is the difference between Spring @Repository exception translation and JDBC exceptions?
#128How do you handle file uploads in Spring Boot?
#129What is Spring Cloud and its key components?
#130What is the difference between @Transactional on a class vs a method?
#131What is Spring Boot's connection pool? How do you tune HikariCP?
#132What is Spring Boot's auto-configuration for messaging (RabbitMQ / Kafka)?
#133What is Spring's @Lookup annotation?
#134What is Spring Security's method security and how is it different from URL security?
#135How does Spring Boot handle environment-specific properties?
#136What is the purpose of @EnableJpaAuditing?
#137How do you implement rate limiting in Spring Boot?
#138What is the difference between eager and lazy initialization in Spring Boot?
#139What is Spring Boot's support for caching with Redis?
#140What is Spring Boot's support for MongoDB?
#141What is @Transactional self-invocation problem and how do you fix it?
#142What is the difference between @Valid and @Validated in Spring?
#143What is Spring Boot's support for scheduled tasks with Quartz?
#144What is Spring Data REST and how does it differ from Spring MVC?
#145What is Flyway and how does it integrate with Spring Boot?
#146What is Spring Boot's support for WebSockets?
#147How do you implement a multi-tenant application in Spring Boot?
#148What are Spring Boot's management endpoints and how do you secure them?
#149What is Spring Boot's support for R2DBC (reactive database access)?
#150How do you implement idempotency in Spring Boot APIs?
#151What is Spring Boot's support for virtual threads (Java 21)?
#152What is Spring Boot's Docker image building support?
#153What is GraalVM native image and Spring Boot AOT support?
#154What is the difference between @SpringBootTest(webEnvironment) options?
#155What is Spring Boot's support for SSE (Server-Sent Events)?
#156What is Resilience4j and how does it integrate with Spring Boot?
#157What are best practices for Spring Boot application performance tuning?
#158Explain the CAP theorem.
#159What is consistent hashing and why is it used?
#160What is database sharding and how does it work?
#161Explain cache invalidation strategies.
#162How would you design a URL shortener (like bit.ly)?
#163What is the Saga pattern in microservices?
#164What is CQRS and when should you use it?
#165What are rate limiting algorithms?
#166What is the Circuit Breaker pattern?
#167How do you design for high availability?
#168What is eventual consistency?
#169What is a message queue and when should you use one?
#170What is the difference between SQL and NoSQL databases?
#171How do you handle distributed transactions without 2PC?
#172How would you design a notification system (push, email, SMS)?
#173What is the difference between REST and gRPC?
#174What is the Outbox Pattern?
#175How do you design a distributed cache layer?
#176What is the difference between synchronous and asynchronous communication in microservices?
#177How do you design a notification system that sends 100M notifications per day?
#178What are the different types of database indexes and when do you use each?
#179How would you design a URL shortener like bit.ly?
#180What is eventual consistency and how do you handle it in practice?
#181How do you design a search system at scale?
#182What is the difference between optimistic and pessimistic locking?
#183How would you design a real-time leaderboard?
#184What is a write-ahead log (WAL) and how is it used?
#185How do you handle distributed transactions across microservices?
#186How do you design a chat application like WhatsApp?
#187What is a service mesh and when should you use one?
#188How would you design a video streaming platform like YouTube?
#189What is the difference between a load balancer and an API gateway?
#190How do you prevent and handle cascading failures in distributed systems?
#191What is the difference between a message queue and a message broker?
#192How do you design a rate limiter for an API?
#193What is the difference between replication and partitioning in databases?
#194How would you design Twitter's news feed?
#195What is observability and what are its three pillars?
#196How do you implement idempotency in APIs?
#197How would you design a distributed job scheduler?
#198What is the Saga pattern vs 2PC for distributed transactions?
#199How do you design a file storage system like Dropbox?
#200What are the trade-offs of microservices vs monolithic architecture?
#201How does DNS work and how is it used in load balancing?
#202What is the strangler fig pattern?
#203How do you design an e-commerce inventory system that handles flash sales?
#204What is the difference between push and pull architectures for data?
#205How do you design a fraud detection system?
#206What is event sourcing and how does it differ from CRUD?
#207How would you design a geospatial service like Uber's nearby driver system?
#208What is API versioning and what are the different strategies?
#209What is a Bloom filter and where is it used in system design?
#210How do you implement zero-downtime deployments?
#211What is the two-generals problem and what does it tell us about distributed systems?
#212How do you design a payment processing system?
#213How would you design an autocomplete system?
#214What is backpressure and how do you handle it?
#215What is a time-series database and when should you use one?
#216What is a circuit breaker and how do you implement it?
#217How do you handle database migrations safely in production?
#218What is the CQRS pattern?
#219How do you secure an API at the architecture level?
#220What is the difference between synchronous replication and asynchronous replication?
#221How do you design a system for billions of events per day (analytics pipeline)?
#222What is chaos engineering and how do you implement it?
#223What is the database connection pool and how do you tune it?
#224How do you design an access control system?
#225How would you design an online code execution system like LeetCode?
#226How does the request flow work in a typical microservices architecture?
#227What is a hot partition problem and how do you solve it?
#228How do you design a multi-tenant SaaS architecture?
#229What is tail latency and why does it matter?
#230How do you design a global, low-latency key-value store?
#231What is the N+1 query problem and how do you fix it?
#232How would you design a booking system like Airbnb?
#233How do you design a recommendation system?
#234What is the read-your-own-writes consistency guarantee?
#235How do you design a search-as-you-type / typeahead feature?
#236What is the difference between gRPC unary, server streaming, client streaming, and bidirectional streaming?
#237How do you handle large file uploads efficiently?
#238What are the key considerations when designing for high write throughput?
#239What is the difference between monolithic and microservices deployment strategies?
#240How do you design for disaster recovery?
#241What is the thundering herd problem?
#242What is a vector clock and how does it work?
#243What is the difference between a monorepo and polyrepo?
#244How do you ensure data consistency across microservices?
#245What is the difference between a batch job and a stream processing job?
#246How do you design an API for mobile clients vs web clients?
#247What is the role of a message broker in event-driven architecture?
#248How do you approach capacity planning for a new system?
#249What is an API Gateway and what does it do?
#250How do microservices communicate?
#251What is service discovery in microservices?
#252What is the Circuit Breaker pattern and how does it prevent cascading failures?
#253What is distributed tracing and why is it important?
#254What is the Strangler Fig pattern for microservices migration?
#255What is a sidecar pattern?
#256How do you manage configuration in microservices?
#257What are the 12-Factor App principles?
#258What is event-driven architecture and when should you use it?
#259What is the difference between orchestration and choreography in Saga?
#260How do you test microservices effectively?
#261What is a service mesh and when should you use one?
#262How do you ensure data consistency across microservices?
#263What is the circuit breaker pattern?
#264What is service discovery and how does it work?
#265What is the Bulkhead pattern?
#266What is the Retry pattern and how do you implement it safely?
#267What is the difference between choreography and orchestration in Sagas?
#268What is the Backend for Frontend (BFF) pattern?
#269How do you implement distributed tracing?
#270What is the Strangler Fig pattern for migrating a monolith?
#271What is eventual consistency and how do you design for it?
#272How do you version microservice APIs?
#273What is the Sidecar pattern?
#274What is a dead letter queue and why is it important?
#275How do you implement health checks in microservices?
#276What is the Outbox pattern and how does it guarantee event delivery?
#277What is idempotency and how do you implement it in microservices?
#278What are the 12-Factor App principles?
#279How do you handle secrets management in microservices?
#280What is the Ambassador pattern in microservices?
#281How do you implement inter-service authentication?
#282What is the Throttling pattern and how does it differ from rate limiting?
#283What is CQRS and how does it apply to microservices?
#284How do you test microservices?
#285What is service isolation and why is it important?
#286What is an Event-Driven Architecture?
#287How do you handle database per service in practice?
#288What is the Role of API composition in microservices?
#289What is graceful degradation in microservices?
#290What is the Event Sourcing pattern?
#291How do you implement logging in a microservices environment?
#292What is the two-phase commit vs Saga for distributed transactions?
#293How do you handle timeouts in microservices?
#294What is the Scatter-Gather pattern?
#295What is the difference between a microservice and a nanoservice?
#296How do you implement canary deployments in microservices?
#297What is a Service Registry?
#298What is blue-green deployment and how does it work?
#299What is the Aggregator pattern?
#300How do microservices handle configuration management?
#301What is the Proxy pattern in microservices?
#302How do you implement distributed locking in microservices?
#303What is Kafka and why is it popular in microservices?
#304How do you manage service dependencies in microservices?
#305What is a bounded context?
#306How do you implement a request-reply pattern over async messaging?
#307What is the Token Bucket algorithm and how is it used for rate limiting?
#308How do you handle schema evolution in event-driven systems?
#309What is the difference between a monolith, microservices, and modular monolith?
#310What is the Choreography pattern in detail?
#311What is a composite microservice?
#312How do you deal with "chatty" microservices?
#313What is a process manager / workflow engine in microservices?
#314How do you implement zero-downtime deployments for microservices?
#315What is the Anti-Corruption Layer pattern?
#316What are the common pitfalls of microservices adoption?
#317What is the difference between orchestration and choreography?
#318How do you implement a consistent read across microservices?
#319What is load shedding?
#320What is the difference between gRPC and REST for inter-service communication?
#321What is the Gateway Aggregation pattern vs Gateway Routing?
#322What is the Inbox pattern?
#323How do you handle versioning of events in Kafka?
#324What is the Open Host Service pattern?
#325How do you implement service-level SLOs in microservices?
#326What is the Claim Check pattern?
#327What is service mesh traffic management?
#328What is the difference between horizontal and vertical scaling for microservices?
#329What is the role of a message schema registry?
#330How do you handle service discovery with Kubernetes?
#331How do you implement an API gateway from scratch?
#332What is consumer-driven contract testing (Pact)?
#333How do you use feature toggles in microservices?
#334What is polyglot persistence in microservices?
#335What are distributed caching strategies for microservices?
#336How do you design a CI/CD pipeline for microservices?
#337How do you implement observability with Micrometer, Prometheus, and Grafana?
#338What is the Retry pattern and when should you NOT retry?
#339How do you implement Saga compensation (rollback) in detail?
#340What is multi-tenancy in microservices and how do you implement it?
#341What are the steps to migrate a monolith to microservices using the Strangler Fig pattern?
#342How do you design microservices for failure?
#343What is data mesh and how does it relate to microservices data ownership?
#344What is a sidecar proxy and how does Envoy work?
#345How do you handle inter-service authorization (not just authentication)?
#346When should you NOT use microservices?
#347What is the difference between a Deployment and a StatefulSet?
#348What are the types of Kubernetes Services?
#349What are liveness and readiness probes?
#350How does Kubernetes autoscaling work?
#351What is RBAC in Kubernetes?
#352How does a rolling update work in Kubernetes?
#353What is a DaemonSet?
#354Explain PersistentVolume and PersistentVolumeClaim.
#355What is a Helm chart?
#356What is an Ingress and how does it differ from a LoadBalancer Service?
#357What are resource requests and limits in Kubernetes?
#358What are the Kubernetes control plane components?
#359What is etcd and why is it critical to Kubernetes?
#360How does the Kubernetes scheduler work?
#361What is a Kubernetes controller and the control loop?
#362What is kubelet and how does it work?
#363What is a CNI plugin and how does pod networking work?
#364What are Kubernetes Network Policies?
#365What are taints and tolerations in Kubernetes?
#366What is node affinity and pod affinity/anti-affinity?
#367What are Kubernetes Jobs and CronJobs?
#368What is a ServiceAccount and how is it used in Kubernetes?
#369What are admission controllers and admission webhooks?
#370What is a Custom Resource Definition (CRD)?
#371What is the Kubernetes Operator pattern?
#372What are Pod Security Standards?
#373How do you encrypt Kubernetes Secrets at rest?
#374What is cert-manager?
#375What is Istio service mesh and how does it work?
#376What is the Kubernetes Gateway API?
#377What is a PodDisruptionBudget (PDB)?
#378What are ResourceQuota and LimitRange?
#379How does Kubernetes DNS work?
#380What is KEDA (Kubernetes Event-Driven Autoscaling)?
#381How do you debug a pod in Pending state?
#382How do you debug a pod in CrashLoopBackOff?
#383What is the Cluster Autoscaler and how does it work?
#384What are init containers and sidecar containers?
#385What is GitOps and how does ArgoCD implement it?
#386What is a PriorityClass in Kubernetes?
#387How do you implement zero-downtime deployments in Kubernetes?
#388What is the Kubernetes API and how does kubectl work?
#389What are pod topology spread constraints?
#390How does Kubernetes persistent volume binding work?
#391What is the Container Storage Interface (CSI)?
#392How does kube-proxy implement service networking?
#393How do you scale with custom metrics using HPA?
#394How do you manage multi-environment Kubernetes configurations?
#395What are OPA Gatekeeper and Kyverno for Kubernetes policy?
#396What is pod preemption and priority scheduling?
#397How do you implement canary deployments in Kubernetes?
#398What is Flux for GitOps?
#399How does etcd backup and restore work?
#400What is the Kubernetes Vertical Pod Autoscaler (VPA)?
#401How do you implement multi-tenancy in Kubernetes?
#402What is the Kubernetes watch mechanism and informers?
#403What is eBPF and how does Cilium use it in Kubernetes?
#404How do you implement mTLS between services in Kubernetes?
#405What is Velero and how do you use it for Kubernetes backup?
#406How do you manage Kubernetes cluster upgrades?
#407What is Kubernetes workload identity (IRSA and Workload Identity)?
#408How do you set up Kubernetes observability with Prometheus Operator?
#409What is the External Secrets Operator?
#410How do you troubleshoot Kubernetes networking issues?
#411How does Kubernetes handle node pressure and pod eviction?
#412What are ephemeral containers in Kubernetes?
#413How do you implement Kubernetes network policies for zero-trust networking?
#414What is the Kubernetes Scheduler framework?
#415How do you implement secret rotation in Kubernetes?
#416What is the Kubernetes API aggregation layer?
#417How do you secure Kubernetes API server access?
#418What is a headless service and when do you use it?
#419What is a ValidatingWebhookConfiguration vs MutatingWebhookConfiguration?
#420How do you implement GitOps with multi-environment promotion?
#421How do you implement Kubernetes cluster-level logging?
#422What is a Kubernetes service account token projection?
#423How do you handle database connection pooling from Kubernetes pods?
#424What are advanced kubectl commands for debugging and operations?
#425What is multi-cluster Kubernetes management?
#426What is Kustomize and how does it work?
#427What is a Kubernetes Ingress controller and which one should you choose?
#428What is a Kubernetes StatefulSet in depth?
#429What is Kubernetes Cluster API?
#430What are Kubernetes finalizers and owner references?
#431How does Kubernetes implement resource quotas across teams?
#432What is a service topology and topology-aware routing?
#433What is Argo Workflows and how does it differ from CronJobs?
#434How do you implement cost optimization for Kubernetes clusters?
#435What is Kubernetes pod topology and high availability design?
#436What is Karpenter and how does it improve node provisioning?
#437How do you debug Kubernetes RBAC issues?
#438What is Progressive Delivery with Argo Rollouts?
#439What is a Kubernetes Service Mesh and do you always need one?
#440What are Kubernetes production best practices?