Week 16 — Architecture docs & AI-era leadership — interview-4¶

At a glance

Phase 4: Production & AI Architecture · Starts: Mon 11 Jan 2027 · Planned: 16h 45m

Build: Capstone: C4 + arc42 doc set, observability dashboards, SLOs live

Interview checkpoint: interview-4

Run the full mock loop and score it with the rubric.

By day¶

System Design · 45 min · LLM capacity planning II: GPU vs API break-even, rate-limit headroom, multi-provider failover → LLM capacity, latency & cost planning w16-sd-1
DSA · 25 min · Decode Ways → Dynamic programming 1-D · resource w16-dsa-1
Python · 20 min · Rep: Pydantic computed fields + serializers for API responses → Pydantic v2 in depth w16-py-1
Communication · 30 min · Grammar: Mixed error review (your personal error log) → Week 16 drills · day 1 w16-comm-1

Agentic AI · 60 min · LLM observability in production: online evals, sampling, PII in traces, cost dashboards in Langfuse/Phoenix → LLM observability: Langfuse, Phoenix, OTel GenAI semconv · resource w16-ai-1
DSA · 30 min · Coin Change → Dynamic programming 1-D · resource w16-dsa-2
Communication · 30 min · Vocabulary: Review and 100-word check → Week 16 drills · day 2 w16-comm-2

DSA · 25 min · Maximum Product Subarray + Palindromic Substrings → Dynamic programming 1-D · resource w16-dsa-3
Architecture · 45 min · Team Topologies: stream-aligned vs platform teams, cognitive load, Conway's law for an AI platform → Team Topologies & Conway's law · resource w16-arch-1
Python · 20 min · Rep: overloads + Literal types for a typed client API → Advanced typing: generics, Protocols, ParamSpec, TypedDict · resource w16-py-2
Communication · 30 min · Speaking drill: A 5-minute pitch → Week 16 drills · day 3 w16-comm-3

Agentic AI · 60 min · Cost optimisation review: find top-3 token sinks from traces and fix (context trimming, cache hits, cheaper model) → Cost & latency optimization: caching, batching, streaming w16-ai-2
Java/Spring AI · 30 min · Write the polyglot decision doc: Java vs Python for AI services (talent, ecosystem, ops, latency) → Java vs Python for AI: polyglot architecture decisions w16-java-1
Communication · 30 min · Idioms & phrasal verbs: Idiom review round → Week 16 drills · day 4 w16-comm-4

System Design · 45 min · Intelligent document processing pipeline: OCR/layout models, extraction schemas, human review queue → Design an intelligent document processing pipeline w16-sd-2
DSA · 25 min · Word Break → Dynamic programming 1-D · resource w16-dsa-4
Python · 20 min · Rep: benchmark with pytest-benchmark; avoid premature optimisation → Performance & profiling w16-py-3
Communication · 30 min · Writing: The one-pager → Week 16 drills · day 5 w16-comm-5

Agentic AI · 120 min · Capstone build: Langfuse dashboards + alerting on SLO burn and eval-score drift; online LLM-as-judge on 10% of traffic → LLM observability: Langfuse, Phoenix, OTel GenAI semconv · resource w16-ai-3
DSA · 30 min · Timed coding mock (interview-4): Longest Increasing Subsequence + Partition Equal Subset Sum in 30 min → Dynamic programming 1-D · resource w16-dsa-5
Java/Spring AI · 30 min · Testcontainers + WireMock contract tests for the Java MCP server → Observability & testing: Micrometer, OTel, Testcontainers w16-java-2
Communication · 30 min · Record & shadow: A 5-minute pitch → Week 16 drills · day 6 w16-comm-6

System Design · 45 min · Timed 45-min SD mock (interview-4): metrics & monitoring system (ingestion, TSDB, downsampling, alerting) → Metrics & monitoring system w16-sd-3
Architecture · 30 min · Write ADR 016 for capstone: ownership model — platform team owns gateway/evals, stream teams own agents → Team Topologies & Conway's law · resource w16-arch-2
Staff+ · 30 min · Artifact: AI adoption plan for an engineering org — productivity measurement, risk policy, enablement → Leading engineering in the AI era: adoption, productivity, risk w16-staff-1
Communication · 30 min · Soft skills + weekly review: Executive presence — checkpoint comm-4: re-record and compare against the baseline rubric → Week 16 drills · day 7 w16-comm-7
Review · 60 min · interview-4: full mock — SD + coding + AI SD + behavioral, score with the unified interview rubric and log gaps into next week's plan → Interview framework & back-of-envelope estimation w16-rev-1