Hello Reader,

I have interviewed hundreds of candidates as a Principal Solutions Architect at AWS, and helped many of my students crack top jobs. And here is what I keep seeing: candidates who are technically qualified still get rejected, because their answers sound exactly like every other candidate's.

In today's edition, I will walk you through few of the most common Solutions Architect interview questions. For each one, I will share the average answer that quietly gets you rejected, and the great answer that gets you hired at AWS, Meta, Netflix, Apple, JP Morgan, and the companies my bootcampers have joined recently.

Let's get started.

1/ What is an AI Agent?

Average answer: "Agents can perform complex tasks without a prompt." Or the other common miss, where candidates throw MCP, RAG, and A2A into a word salad without ever answering the question.

Why this is average: It does not show what makes an agent different from a standalone LLM or a conditional workflow. And interviewers can tell when you are name-dropping terms you have not actually used.

Great answer: An AI Agent is a software program that autonomously and independently chooses the best actions until a task is completed. That autonomy is the differentiator.

Explain with an example. A standalone LLM returns an answer. It does not act on anything. An agent, by contrast, takes a prompt like "identify and fix issues in my AWS application" and runs a loop. The agentic code talks to an LLM plus a set of tools. It decides which tool to invoke, in what order, and how many times. It may pull logs, cross-check documentation, invoke a remediation tool, then return with the issue resolved.

Delight the interviewer: Mention your own proof of concept. "I built an agent where the agentic code ran on AWS Strands, the LLM came from Amazon Bedrock, and tool integration was handled via MCP." That one sentence separates you from every candidate who only read about agents.

2/ How do you secure your application on the cloud?

Average answer: "I will use KMS, IAM, and firewalls."

Why this is average: It lists services without explaining what they protect against. It also does not tie the security story to an actual application.

Great answer: Pick one concrete design (for example, API Gateway → Lambda → database) and walk through defense in depth, layer by layer. Authentication via Cognito. Data in transit encrypted with TLS via API Gateway's HTTPS endpoint, custom certs stored in ACM. DDoS protection out of the box at API Gateway, plus WAF for SQL injection and cross-site scripting. Lambda code scanned by Inspector for runtime vulnerabilities. IAM roles attached with least privilege, resource policies scoping which APIs can invoke the function. Database secrets stored in Secrets Manager with rotation. Data at rest encrypted with KMS.

The point of defense in depth is that even if one layer is compromised, the blast radius stays contained.

3/ Describe an architecture you designed

This is the system design presentation round, usually taken by the hiring manager. They are not primarily testing your technical depth here. They are testing how you work backwards from a business problem, the trade-offs you made, and how you handled the challenges that came up.

The biggest mistake I see: candidates bring a fancy design with Kubernetes and ECS because they think it will impress the interviewer. Then when I ask how it scales, how it is secured, how it handles high traffic, they go blank.

Great approach: Present an architecture you actually built, even if it is simple. When I interviewed at AWS, I presented the API Gateway + Lambda microservice I had built at Verizon. It was not fancy. But because I had actually implemented it, I could answer every follow-up question the hiring manager threw at me.

Interviewers do not reject you for a simple design you can defend. They reject you for a fancy design you cannot.

Now do this - think about other answers you have given at interviews, especially the ones where you didn't get the job. And think if you could have improved them. Then, use the modified and improved answer in the next interview.

Keep learning and keep rocking 🚀,

Raj

P.S - If you want to get an AWS Solutions Architect job without coding or learning every AWS service, the 8th cohort for AWS SA Bootcamp is launching on May 16th, 12 PM ET (Eastern Time) via live webinar. Please register for the webinar below:

Here’s what you get when you show up LIVE:

1. My exclusive Solutions Architect framework to prep you for today's job market! But if you’re not live, you won’t get it. No second chances.
2. Full bootcamp details, my new stealth product reveal to help you prepare better, AND a special offer for live participants only.
3. You will have the chance to interact with me and ask questions.

And good news - it already worked for last cohort's students who secured cloud jobs in top companies, including at AWS, Microsoft, Google, JPMorgan, Reddit, and some of them didn't even have cloud experience 💰.

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