2 min lesson
Rehearse a small infrastructure project
Imagine this comes up at work. "The posting does not publish AI-tool rules for the onsite project. What should you do?" Start with the practical move.
Step 1 of 2
The posting says the in-office onsite includes a small project. It does not publish the duration, brief, source materials, working setup, permitted tools, expected output or scoring. Confirm all of those details with recruiting; use the exercises below only as role-relevant practice.
For a self-directed project drill, practise making a small result reproducible, testing the risky parts and recording assumptions, tradeoffs and next steps. These are useful engineering habits, not a published Cursor evaluation rubric.
- Practice drill
- Small-project setup
- Status
- Role-relevant practice
- Useful rehearsal
- A reproducible start, explicit assumptions and a narrow scope
- Practice drill
- Implementation
- Status
- Role-relevant practice
- Useful rehearsal
- Clear code, focused verification and ownership of the result
- Practice drill
- Infrastructure design
- Status
- Optional practice; not a published round
- Useful rehearsal
- Latency, cost, regional failure and scaling tradeoffs
- Practice drill
- Prior-project explanation
- Status
- Optional practice; not a published round
- Useful rehearsal
- A verified decision, alternatives, evidence and result
| Practice drill | Status | Useful rehearsal |
|---|---|---|
| Small-project setup | Role-relevant practice | A reproducible start, explicit assumptions and a narrow scope |
| Implementation | Role-relevant practice | Clear code, focused verification and ownership of the result |
| Infrastructure design | Optional practice; not a published round | Latency, cost, regional failure and scaling tradeoffs |
| Prior-project explanation | Optional practice; not a published round | A verified decision, alternatives, evidence and result |
The posting does not publish an AI-tool policy. Follow the current instructions exactly. If they allow Cursor or another AI tool, stay accountable for correctness by scoping prompts, verifying output and rejecting bad suggestions. If they do not allow a tool, do not use it.
- 1Confirm the onsite brief. Ask recruiting about the duration, source materials, tools, working setup and expected output.
- 2For practice, state assumptions. In a self-directed drill, separate what the brief says from what you chose.
- 3Build a narrow result. Practise getting the smallest useful slice working before expanding it.
- 4Verify risky behavior. Check the failures and boundaries most likely to invalidate the practice result.
- 5Explain tradeoffs honestly. State what you cut, what you would harden and which cost or reliability tradeoff you made.
As a role-relevant drill, set a latency budget, compare regional deployment costs, say what fails when a region goes dark and choose an autoscaling signal. The posting names regional deployment, cost management and autoscaling experience, but it does not publish a system-design interview round.
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Full explanation
Optional experience practice
Separately rehearse explaining one verified infrastructure decision in case you are asked about prior work. State the problem, the alternatives, the evidence behind your choice and the measured result. The posting does not publish a past-work round, and you should never borrow a story you did not live.