Baseten interview questions

Showing 1–8 of 8 results

• Build a Crash-Consistent Single-Server Key-Value StoreHard

  Design and implement a thread-safe, crash-consistent key-value storage engine that persists byte-string records to an append-only log on disk, recovers from partial writes, and supports tombstones.

  BasetenSoftware EngineerSoftware Engineering FundamentalsTechnical Screen
• Design a Data Pipeline for Messy Pod Alerts and Bad Pod DetectionMedium

  Prepare for a Baseten system design interview about design a data pipeline for messy pod alerts and bad pod detection. This question focuses on requirements, architecture, trade-offs, reliability, and follow-up discussion areas.

  BasetenData EngineerSystem DesignTechnical Screen
• Design an LLM Inference Serving SystemHard

  Design an end-to-end, high-performance LLM serving platform that manages request admission, continuous batching, KV cache memory, token streaming, and GPU fleet autoscaling under tight latency SLAs.

  BasetenSoftware EngineerML System DesignTechnical Screen
• Design an observability logging system for emitting and querying logsMedium

  System design question: build an observability logging system that lets services emit structured logs and lets engineers query them. It covers non-blocking client buffering, ingestion with backpressure and a durable buffer, time-partitioned storage, indexing versus scanning trade-offs, query execution limits, and isolating noisy services.

  BasetenSoftware EngineerSystem DesignOnsite
• One-pass S-expression parser with nested lists and precise error handlingMedium

  Implement a single-pass parser for simplified S-expressions in three stages: atoms, a parenthesized list, and arbitrarily nested lists, without splitting the input. The exercise centers on error handling: detecting invalid characters, malformed numbers, unclosed or unexpected parentheses and trailing input, and stopping with a precise error position.

  BasetenSoftware EngineerSoftware Engineering FundamentalsOnsite
• Parallelize Blocking API Calls with a Thread PoolHard

  Implement a robust, bounded concurrent batch runner that parallelizes blocking calls while preserving input order, handling errors, and enforcing timeouts.

  BasetenSoftware EngineerSoftware Engineering FundamentalsTechnical Screen
• Parallelize chunked file download and verify integrityMedium

  This problem tests your ability to implement a concurrent file downloader that fetches file segments in parallel, handles partial failures with retries, and verifies overall data integrity using a checksum.

  BasetenSoftware EngineerCoding & AlgorithmsTechnical Screen
• XOR-based random number generator used to encrypt and decrypt a tree documentMedium

  A two-part coding exercise: implement a pseudo-random number generator built from bit shifts and XOR, then use it as a keystream to encrypt and decrypt a tree-structured document so the original tree is restored exactly. It tests fixed-width bit manipulation, seeding, unambiguous serialization, and awareness of the security limits of hand-made ciphers.

  BasetenSoftware EngineerSoftware Engineering FundamentalsOnsite