Own core data platform components (Kafka, Flink, Spark, Trino, Druid, Airflow) at petabyte scale

Design a Senior Software Engineer interview for Roblox's Data Infra org, where the candidate will own and scale distributed data platform frameworks processing petabytes of data daily. Focus on deep technical experience with at least one or two of Kafka, Flink, Spark, Trino, Druid, or Airflow, strong backend engineering in Java/Go/Scala, and Kubernetes-based cloud operations at scale.

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What this interview tests

Deep expertise in 1-2 of: Kafka, Flink, Spark, Trino, Druid, Airflow
Distributed systems design and operation at large scale
Performance optimization: query planning, state management, memory/serialization
Kubernetes operations on AWS/GCP
Technical leadership and cross-team alignment

Common question themes

Describe the data platform technology you know deepest and a hard production issue you solved in it

How would you approach optimizing a query engine or streaming pipeline under heavy load

Tell me about owning the architecture of a platform component end to end

How do you align a platform roadmap with data science and product engineering needs

How have you mentored engineers or driven technical direction across teams

How candidates describe it

Real Senior Software Engineer interview stories — retold from candidates' public write-ups, with sources.

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