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Also forCloud Solutions ArchitectEnterprise ArchitectCloud architect loops are weighted very differently from a software engineering loop, and preparing for one as though it were the other is the most common way candidates underperform. The design round assumes the building blocks exist and asks which you would select and why; there is usually far less capacity arithmetic than a system design round expects, and considerably more about failure behaviour, blast radius, migration order and what the design costs to run.
Expect a cloud architecture design question as the centrepiece — designing a platform on managed services, planning a migration, or scaling something that already exists — plus a broad discussion round covering security, deployment strategy, microservices and cost. Coding rounds are usually present but lighter, and rarely the deciding factor. Interviewers listen for whether you name both a self-managed and a managed option for each capability and can justify the choice from stated constraints rather than from habit.
Grinding algorithm problems while never practising saying a design out loud. The bottleneck in this loop is almost always the discussion rounds, where an unstructured answer to a broad question does more damage than a suboptimal algorithm ever would.
Prefer a sequence to a catalogue?
The 6-week Cloud Architect study plan orders this material week by week, easiest first, with a free first week and progress derived from what you have already completed.
Fully unlocked, solutions included. Enough to see whether the format suits you.
Broad questions with no system to draw. Free, and frequently where this loop is decided.
Easiest first. 43 in total for this role.
At senior level it eliminates more candidates than the technical rounds do. Free interactive guides to the questions that come up most.
Usually yes, but weighted much lighter than in a software engineering loop, and often at a lower difficulty. The rounds that decide the outcome are the architecture design and the broad technical discussion, so preparation time is better spent there once you can comfortably handle straightforward coding problems.
Enough to size a cache against a working set or check a service quota against your peak, but the full back-of-envelope treatment is rarely the assessment. Spending fifteen minutes on arithmetic while never discussing failure modes or cost is a common way to lose this round.
Knowing one well is enough, provided you can talk in categories rather than only product names. Object storage, managed queues, managed relational databases and serverless compute map across providers almost one to one, and interviewers routinely accept an answer given in another provider's vocabulary.