Agent skill · writing content · erichowens
senior-coding-interview
Prepare for L6+ coding interviews — in-memory databases, concurrency, state management, iterative follow-ups. Use when practicing real-world system-building problems or preparing communication
Why this skill is useful
Provides structured methodologies and best practices for senior-level coding interviews that the AI wouldn't reliably generate on its own.
What it needs
About 7k tokens when loaded. Last updated 2026-07-14. 180 stars on the source repository.
What this skill does
Senior Coding Interview Execute L6+ real-world coding interviews where the problem is building a small system, not solving an algorithm puzzle. The core differentiator at Staff+ level is not whether you can solve it, but how you solve it: clean abstractions, narrated reasoning, graceful iteration, and production sensibility. When to Use Practicing real-world coding problems (in-memory stores, rate limiters, task schedulers) Reviewing interview code for senior-level signals Preparing communication strategy for live coding sessions Working through CodeSignal incremental-style problems Mock interview practice with follow-up extensions NOT for: LeetCode/competitive programming (segment trees, suffix arrays, contest optimization) Behavioral interviews (use interview-loop-strategist) System design whiteboard with no code (use ml-system-design-interview) Resume or career strategy --- The 4-Stage Approach Stage 1: Clarify (5 minutes) Goal: Demonstrate you think before coding. Ask questions that reveal ambiguity the interviewer planted intentionally. Mandatory questions for every problem: 1. Scale: "How many items/requests are we expecting?" (determines data structure choice) 2. API surface: "Should this be a class with methods, or standalone functions?" 3. Constraints: "Are keys always strings? Can values be None/null?" 4. Concurrency: "Single-threaded for now, or should I consider thread safety?" 5. Error handling: "Should invalid input raise exceptions or return error values?" Restate the problem in your own words before writing any code. This catches misunderstandings early and signals comprehension. Stage 2: Skeleton (20 minutes) Goal: Get a working solution for the core case. Not perfect, not optimized -- working. Order of implementation: 1. Define the data model (dataclass or NamedTuple for structured data) 2. Write the class/function signatures with type hints 3. Implement the happy path 4. …
How to use it
Reference it in AdaL, Claude Code, Cursor or any coding agent — nothing to install:
@skills erichowens/senior-coding-interview