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Interview preparation roadmap · Technology

SQL, performance tuning, backups, replication and security for production databases.

SQLPerformanceOperations

0 / 18 complete · 10 core · 8 other · 96 subtopics

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  1. 01Interview foundations
  2. 02Foundations
  3. 03DBA core
  4. 04Role-specific
  5. 05Practice
  6. 06Company & final prep
CoreCommonly assessedGood to knowRole-dependentAdvancedFor deeper interviewsOptionalNot needed by everyoneCompletedYour progressYou are hereNext up

  1. 01Interview foundations

    What every interviewer sees first.

    1. 01.1Resume

      CoreBeginner3–5 h

      A one-page resume you can defend line by line.

      What this covers

      • One-page format — Reverse-chronological, clean fonts, no photos or tables that confuse parsers.
      • Project bullets — Action + what you built + a number (users, speed, accuracy).
      • Skills section — Only skills you can answer questions on for two minutes.
      • ATS readability — Export a text-based PDF and check it with a parser.
      • Working links — GitHub, LinkedIn and a live project link that open.
      • Tailoring — Reorder bullets to match the job description.

      What to practise

      • Run your PDF through a parser test
      • Rewrite each bullet as action + result
      • Remove any skill you can't explain for 2 minutes

      Common questions

      • Walk me through your resume.
      • Which project here are you most proud of, and why?
      • Why is this skill on your resume?

      Free resources

      • OpenResume — Free ATS-friendly resume builder and parser test (Free)
      • Jake's Resume (Overleaf) — The LaTeX resume template most SDE freshers use (Free)
      • Resume Worded — Resume and LinkedIn scoring (Free plan)
      • Jobscan — Match your resume against a job description (Free plan)

      Free courses

    2. 01.2Tell me about yourself

      CoreBeginner1–2 h

      A 60–90 second answer: present, past, why this role.

      What this covers

      • Present — Who you are now: degree, year, focus.
      • Past — One or two proof points: a project, internship or result.
      • Future — Why this role and this company next.
      • Length — 60–90 seconds; stop before you list everything.
      • Delivery — Calm pace and eye contact, not a memorised script.

      What to practise

      • Write it, then say it out loud 5 times
      • Record yourself and cut anything over 90 seconds

      Common questions

      • Tell me about yourself.
      • Why should we hire you?
      • Where do you see yourself in a few years?

      Free resources

      Free courses

    3. 01.3Behavioral & STAR

      CoreBeginner3–4 h

      Stories about teamwork, conflict and failure, told with STAR.

      What this covers

      • STAR structure — Situation, task, action, result. Spend most of the time on action.
      • Story bank — 6–8 real stories you can reuse across questions.
      • Teamwork & conflict — Disagreeing respectfully and what you changed.
      • Failure & weakness — A real one, what you learned, what you do now.
      • Ownership — Times you took initiative without being asked.
      • Common HR questions — Why us, why you, strengths, relocation.

      What to practise

      • Write 6 stories in STAR form
      • Map each story to 2–3 common questions
      • Practise one story with a friend

      Common questions

      • Tell me about a time you failed.
      • Describe a conflict in a team and what you did.
      • What is your biggest weakness?

      Free resources

      Free courses

  2. 02Foundations

    Database theory.

    1. 02.1DBMS

      CoreIntermediate6–10 h

      Keys, normalisation, transactions and writing SQL by hand.

      What this covers

      • Keys & constraints — Primary, foreign, candidate, unique.
      • ER modelling — Entities, relationships, cardinality.
      • Normalisation — 1NF to 3NF/BCNF and why it matters.
      • Transactions & ACID — Atomicity, consistency, isolation, durability.
      • Indexing — B-trees; when an index helps and when it hurts.
      • SQL by hand — Joins, GROUP BY and subqueries on paper.

      What to practise

      • Write 15 SQL queries by hand
      • Normalise one messy table on paper

      Common questions

      • What is normalisation and why does it matter?
      • Primary key vs foreign key?
      • What does ACID stand for?

      Free resources

      • GeeksforGeeks — Company-wise questions and theory (Free plan)
      • SQLZoo — SQL by doing, in the browser (Free)
      • InterviewBit — Guided interview prep path (Free plan)

      Free courses

    2. 02.2SQL for interviews

      Good to knowBeginner4–6 h

      Query questions that show up in many tech and data rounds.

      What this covers

      • SELECT basics — Filtering, sorting, LIMIT.
      • Joins — Inner, left and self joins.
      • Aggregation — GROUP BY, HAVING, COUNT DISTINCT.
      • Subqueries & CTEs — Breaking a hard query into steps.
      • Window functions — RANK, ROW_NUMBER, running totals.

      What to practise

      • 20 interview-style SQL questions
      • Rewrite one long query using a CTE

      Common questions

      • Find the second-highest salary.
      • INNER JOIN vs LEFT JOIN?

      Free resources

      • SQLZoo — SQL by doing, in the browser (Free)
      • DataLemur — SQL and analytics interview questions (Free plan)

      Free courses

    3. 02.3Operating systems

      Good to knowIntermediate6–10 h

      Processes, threads, scheduling, memory and deadlocks.

      What this covers

      • Processes & threads — Differences and context switching.
      • CPU scheduling — FCFS, SJF, round robin, priority.
      • Synchronisation — Race conditions, mutexes, semaphores.
      • Deadlocks — The four conditions, prevention, avoidance.
      • Memory management — Paging, segmentation, virtual memory.
      • Page replacement — FIFO, LRU, optimal.

      What to practise

      • Draw the process state diagram from memory
      • Explain a deadlock with a real example

      Common questions

      • Process vs thread?
      • What are the four conditions for deadlock?
      • What is virtual memory?

      Free resources

      Free courses

  3. 03DBA core

    Running databases.

    1. 03.1Databases in depth

      CoreAdvanced8–12 h

      Performance, transactions and operations for database roles.

      What this covers

      • Query plans — Reading EXPLAIN and fixing slow queries.
      • Indexing strategy — Composite, covering and partial indexes.
      • Isolation levels — Read phenomena and locking.
      • Replication & HA — Primary/replica, failover.
      • Backup & recovery — Point-in-time recovery, testing restores.
      • Security — Roles, privileges, auditing.

      What to practise

      • Speed up a slow query using an index and EXPLAIN
      • Set up a replica locally

      Common questions

      • What are isolation levels?
      • How would you find a slow query in production?

      Free resources

      Free courses

    2. 03.2Linux & the command line

      CoreBeginner4–8 h

      Everyday commands, permissions and processes.

      What this covers

      • Navigation & files — ls, cd, find, grep, less.
      • Permissions — chmod, chown, users and groups.
      • Processes — ps, top, kill, background jobs.
      • Networking tools — curl, ping, ss, dig.
      • Shell scripting — Variables, loops, pipes, exit codes.
      • Logs & services — journalctl, systemctl, tail -f.

      What to practise

      • Solve the first 15 levels of a command-line wargame
      • Write a script that backs up a folder daily

      Common questions

      • How do you find which process uses a port?
      • What does chmod 755 mean?

      Free resources

      Free courses

    3. 03.3Cloud fundamentals

      Good to knowIntermediate8–12 h

      Compute, storage, networking and identity on one major cloud.

      What this covers

      • Compute — VMs, containers, serverless.
      • Storage & databases — Object, block, managed databases.
      • Networking — VPCs, subnets, load balancers, DNS.
      • Identity & access — Users, roles, least privilege.
      • Cost & regions — Pricing basics, availability zones.
      • Shared responsibility — What the provider secures and what you do.

      What to practise

      • Deploy a small app using free-tier services
      • Draw your app's cloud architecture

      Common questions

      • What is a VPC?
      • Difference between horizontal and vertical scaling?
      • How would you make an app highly available?

      Free resources

      Free courses

    4. 03.4Security fundamentals

      Good to knowIntermediate8–12 h

      Core security concepts every security interview starts with.

      What this covers

      • CIA triad — Confidentiality, integrity, availability.
      • Authentication & access — MFA, least privilege, access control.
      • Cryptography basics — Hashing vs encryption, TLS, keys.
      • Common attacks — Phishing, malware, brute force, MITM.
      • Network security — Firewalls, IDS/IPS, segmentation.
      • Frameworks — A basic idea of risk, policy and compliance.

      What to practise

      • Complete a beginner path on a hands-on lab platform
      • Explain how HTTPS protects a login

      Common questions

      • Difference between hashing and encryption?
      • What is a man-in-the-middle attack?
      • How would you secure a new laptop for an employee?

      Free resources

      Free courses

  4. 04Role-specific

    Incidents and improvements.

    1. 04.1Projects & resume defense

      CoreIntermediate4–6 h

      Explaining what you built, why, and what you would change.

      What this covers

      • The problem — What it solves and for whom.
      • Your role — Exactly what you built yourself.
      • Architecture — A simple diagram: frontend, backend, database.
      • Hardest bug — What broke and how you found it.
      • Trade-offs — Why this stack; what you would change now.
      • Scale questions — What happens with 10x the users.

      What to practise

      • Prepare a 2-minute walkthrough per project
      • Be ready to draw its architecture

      Common questions

      • What was the hardest part of this project?
      • Why did you choose this tech stack?
      • How would it handle 10x more users?

      Free resources

      Free courses

    2. 04.2Monitoring & reliability

      Good to knowIntermediate4–8 h

      Keeping systems healthy and responding to incidents.

      What this covers

      • Metrics, logs, traces — What each tells you.
      • SLIs, SLOs & error budgets — Measuring reliability.
      • Alerting — Useful alerts vs noise.
      • Incident response — Triage, communication, postmortems.
      • Capacity & load — Planning for traffic.

      What to practise

      • Set up a dashboard and one alert for a project
      • Write a blameless postmortem for a past bug

      Common questions

      • What is an SLO?
      • How would you debug a sudden latency spike?

      Free resources

      Free courses

  5. 05Practice

    Saying it out loud is a different skill.

    1. 05.1Technical mock interviews

      CoreIntermediate3–6 h

      At least two full coding mocks before the real one.

      What this covers

      • Thinking aloud — Narrate your approach before and while coding.
      • Clarifying questions — Confirm inputs, scale and edge cases first.
      • Handling hints — Take them gracefully and adapt.
      • "I don't know" — Say what you do know and how you would find out.
      • Review the recording — Fillers, pace, unclear explanations.

      What to practise

      • Do two peer mock interviews
      • Record one spoken mock and listen back

      Common questions

      • Walk me through your approach before you code.
      • How would you test this?

      Free resources

      Free courses

    2. 05.2Technical communication

      Good to knowBeginner2–3 h

      Explaining your thinking clearly in English.

      What this covers

      • Structure — Big picture first, then details.
      • Plain words — Explain without jargon.
      • Checking in — "Does that make sense so far?"
      • Written English — Clear emails and follow-ups.

      What to practise

      • Explain one project to a non-CS friend
      • Record a 2-minute explanation of your best project and listen back

      Common questions

      • Explain recursion to a 10-year-old.

      Free resources

      Free courses

  6. 06Company & final prep

    The last 48 hours.

    1. 06.1Company research

      CoreBeginner1–2 h

      The product, the role, the job description and recent news.

      What this covers

      • The business — What it sells and to whom.
      • The role — What the job description really asks for.
      • Recent news — Launches, results, announcements.
      • Interview format — The rounds, if the company shares them.
      • Your fit — Three reasons, matched to the job description.

      What to practise

      • Write 3 reasons you want this role
      • Match 3 JD lines to your experience

      Common questions

      • Why do you want to work here?
      • What do you know about our product?

      Free resources

    2. 06.2Questions to ask

      Good to knowBeginner30 min

      Two or three good questions for the end of the interview.

      What this covers

      • About the team — How work is planned and reviewed.
      • About growth — Mentoring, learning, the first 90 days.
      • About the product — What is hard right now.
      • What to avoid — Questions a quick search answers.

      What to practise

      • Write 5 questions, keep the best 3
      • Prepare one question about the team's own product

      Common questions

      • Do you have any questions for us?

      Free resources

    3. 06.3Final checklist

      CoreBeginner30 min

      Logistics, documents, setup and a calm night before.

      What this covers

      • Logistics — Time, timezone, link or address.
      • Documents — Resume copies, ID, certificates if asked.
      • Tech check — Camera, mic, internet, charger.
      • Night before — Sleep, light revision, no new topics.

      What to practise

      • Do a 5-minute tech check the day before
      • Lay out documents and clothes the night before

      Free resources

    4. 06.4Job & interview safety

      Good to knowBeginner15 min

      Spot fake offers, payment requests and fake interview links.

      What this covers

      • Payment requests — Real employers don't charge for jobs or training.
      • Email domains — Check it matches the company's own site.
      • OTPs & logins — Never share them with anyone.
      • Fake interview links — Care with unknown chat apps and downloads.
      • Reporting — The 1930 helpline and cybercrime.gov.in.

      What to practise

      • Check one recent offer against these rules
      • Confirm the opening is listed on the company's own careers page

      Free resources

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