5/28/25, 1:15 AM 300+ Spring Boot interview questions | by Arvind Kumar | Apr, 2025 | Medium

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300+ Spring Boot interview questions

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21 min read · Apr 16, 2025

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Comprehensive list of 300+ Spring Boot interview questions tailored for a

Microservices Backend Engineer role and , covering all important modules and
grouped by topic.

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Topics
1. Core Spring & Spring Boot (Beginner to Advanced)

2. Spring Boot Annotations & Configurations

3. Spring Data JPA & Transactions

4. Spring Security (Basic to OAuth2/JWT)

5. Spring Boot Testing (Unit, Integration, Testcontainers)

6. Microservices with Spring Boot (Design, Patterns, Interservice Communication)

7. Spring Cloud Ecosystem (Config, Discovery, Gateway, Resilience4j)

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8. Performance, Observability & Production Readiness

9. Advanced Topics (Reactive, Event-Driven, CI/CD Integration)

Let's start one by one

1. Core Spring & Spring Boot (Beginner to Advanced)

1. What is Spring Framework?
A lightweight Java framework for building enterprise-level applications with
dependency injection, AOP, and more.

2. What is Spring Boot and how is it different from Spring?

Spring Boot simplifies Spring setup with auto-configuration and embedded
servers.

3. What are the advantages of using Spring Boot?

Rapid development, reduced boilerplate, production-ready metrics, and easy
integration.

4. What is dependency injection in Spring?

A design pattern where dependencies are injected by the framework rather than
created manually.

5. What is the difference between @Component, @Service, @Repository?

All are stereotypes; they differ in semantics and layer-specific functionalities
like exception translation.

6. What is ApplicationContext?
The central interface to access Spring beans and configuration.

7. What is the use of @SpringBootApplication?

It combines @Configuration, @EnableAutoConfiguration, and
@ComponentScan.

8. What is @EnableAutoConfiguration?
It tells Spring Boot to guess and configure beans based on classpath settings.

9. How does Spring Boot decide what to auto-configure?

It uses spring.factories files and conditional annotations like
@ConditionalOnClass .

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10. What is the role of application.properties or application.yml ?

It holds configuration values like port, DB credentials, etc.

11. What is a Bean in Spring?

A Java object managed by the Spring IoC container.

12. How do you define a bean?

Using @Bean in a @Configuration class or component scanning annotations like
@Component .

13. What is the lifecycle of a Spring Bean?

Instantiate → Populate → Initialize → Use → Destroy.

14. What is @Qualifier used for?

It helps in resolving bean ambiguity when multiple beans of the same type exist.

15. Difference between Singleton and Prototype scope in Spring?

Singleton creates one instance per Spring container; Prototype creates a new
instance each time.

16. What is the use of @Value annotation?

Injects values from properties or SpEL into Spring beans.

17. What is Spring AOP?

Aspect-Oriented Programming allows separation of cross-cutting concerns like
logging and security.

18. What are the key modules in Spring?

Core, Context, AOP, JDBC, ORM, Web, Security, etc.

19. What is circular dependency and how does Spring handle it?
Two or more beans depend on each other. Spring can handle it via setter
injection or lazy initialization.

20. How do you run a Spring Boot application?

Using SpringApplication.run() or from the command line using mvn spring-

boot:run or ./gradlew bootrun

2. Spring Boot Annotations & Configurations

1. What is @Configuration?
Marks a class as a source of bean definitions.

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2. What is @Bean?
Declares a bean explicitly within a @Configuration class.

3. What is @ComponentScan?
Tells Spring where to look for components to auto-register.

4. What is @Component?
A generic stereotype for defining a Spring-managed bean.

5. What is the difference between @Component and @Bean?

@Component is used on classes; @Bean is used in config classes for method-level
bean creation.

6. What is @RestController?
Combines @Controller and @ResponseBody , used for REST APIs.

7. What is @RequestMapping?
Maps HTTP requests to handler methods.

8. Difference between @GetMapping and @RequestMapping(method=GET)?

@GetMapping is a shortcut for @RequestMapping(method = RequestMethod.GET) .

9. What is @Autowired?
Automatically injects dependencies by type.

10. What is constructor-based vs field-based injection?

Constructor is preferred for immutability and easier testing; field is less
boilerplate but harder to test.

11. What is @ConditionalOnProperty?

Enables a bean only when a specific property is present or has a given value.

12. What is @Profile?

Enables beans only for specified active profiles (e.g., dev, prod).

13. How do you set active profiles in Spring Boot?

Via application.properties , command-line args, or environment variables.

14. What is @PropertySource?

Loads external properties files into the Spring Environment.

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15. What is @ConfigurationProperties?

Binds a POJO to properties from application.yml / properties .

16. What is @EnableConfigurationProperties?

Enables @ConfigurationProperties support in Spring Boot.

17. What is @EnableScheduling?

Enables support for scheduled tasks using @Scheduled .

18. What is @Scheduled?

Schedules method execution at fixed intervals or cron expressions.

19. What is @EnableAsync?

Enables asynchronous execution using @Async .

20. What is @Async?

Executes a method in a separate thread asynchronously.

3. Spring Data JPA & Transactions

1. What is Spring Data JPA?
A module that simplifies data access using JPA with minimal boilerplate.

2. What is JpaRepository?
An interface that provides CRUD and pagination support out of the box.

3. Difference between CrudRepository and JpaRepository?

JpaRepository extends CrudRepository and adds features like pagination and
sorting.

4. How do you define a custom query in Spring Data JPA?

Using @Query with JPQL or native SQL in a repository method.

5. What is the use of @Entity?

Marks a class as a JPA entity mapped to a table.

6. What is @Id?
Marks the primary key of an entity.

7. What is @GeneratedValue?
Specifies how the primary key is generated (e.g., AUTO, IDENTITY).

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8. What is the N+1 select problem in JPA?

Occurs when lazy-loaded relationships trigger multiple unnecessary queries.

9. How to solve N+1 problem?

Use @EntityGraph , fetch joins, or batch fetching.

10. What is the default fetch type for @OneToMany and @ManyToOne?
@OneToMany : LAZY, @ManyToOne : EAGER.

11. What is @Transactional?

Manages transaction boundaries declaratively.

12. Where should @Transactional be placed?

On service layer methods that involve data manipulation.

13. What is the difference between @Transactional(readOnly = true) and without

it?
Read-only optimizes performance for read operations.

14. Can @Transactional be used on private methods?

No, it works only on public methods due to proxy-based AOP.

15. How do you handle transactions in nested service calls?

Use PROPAGATION settings in @Transactional .

16. What is propagation in Spring transactions?

Defines how transactions relate across method boundaries.

17. What is isolation in transactions?

Defines how transaction integrity is maintained with concurrent access.

18. How do you handle optimistic locking in JPA?

Use @Version annotation to detect concurrent modifications.

19. How do you implement pagination in Spring Data JPA?

Use Pageable and return type as Page<T> .

20. How do you audit entities in JPA?

Use @CreatedDate , @LastModifiedDate with @EntityListeners .

4. Spring Security (Basic to OAuth2/JWT)

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1. What is Spring Security?

A framework for securing Java applications with authentication, authorization,
and protection against common attacks.

2. What are the key components of Spring Security?

AuthenticationManager , SecurityFilterChain , UserDetailsService , and
SecurityContext .

3. How do you configure HTTP Basic Authentication in Spring Boot?

Using httpBasic() in the SecurityFilterChain bean.

4. What is the difference between authentication and authorization?

Authentication verifies identity; authorization determines access rights.

5. What is the default security behavior of Spring Boot?

All endpoints are secured with HTTP Basic and in-memory user/password.

6. How do you create a custom login form in Spring Security?

Override the default login page using formLogin().loginPage("/login") .

7. What is CSRF and how does Spring handle it?

Cross-Site Request Forgery; Spring Security includes CSRF tokens by default.

8. How do you disable CSRF protection in Spring Security?

http.csrf().disable() – only in stateless APIs.

9. How do you secure REST APIs in Spring Boot?

Use stateless JWT authentication or OAuth2 with SecurityFilterChain .

10. What is JWT?

JSON Web Token — a stateless, signed token for user identity and claims.

11. What are the parts of a JWT token?

Header, Payload (Claims), and Signature.

12. How do you implement JWT-based authentication in Spring Boot?

Generate a token at login, and use a filter to validate token on every request.

13. What is the role of OncePerRequestFilter in JWT authentication?

It’s a custom filter that validates and sets authentication per request.

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14. How do you store user details for authentication?

Implement UserDetails and UserDetailsService .

15. What is PasswordEncoder in Spring Security?

Interface used to encode and match passwords (e.g., BCrypt).

16. What is @EnableWebSecurity?

Enables Spring Security configuration.

17. How to implement method-level security in Spring?

Enable with @EnableMethodSecurity , then use @PreAuthorize , @Secured , etc.

18. What is OAuth2 and how is it different from JWT?

OAuth2 is a protocol for delegated authorization; JWT is a token format.

19. How do you use Spring Security OAuth2 for login?

Use spring-boot-starter-oauth2-client and configure providers like Google.

20. What is the difference between stateful and stateless security?

Stateful keeps session; stateless uses tokens like JWT with no server-side
session.

5. Spring Boot Testing (Unit, Integration, Testcontainers)

1. What is @SpringBootTest used for?
Loads the full application context for integration tests.

2. What is the difference between @WebMvcTest and @SpringBootTest?

@WebMvcTest loads only web layer; @SpringBootTest loads the full context.

3. How do you test a controller in isolation?

Use @WebMvcTest with MockMvc .

4. What is MockMvc?
A testing utility for simulating HTTP requests in web layer tests.

5. What is @DataJpaTest?
Loads only JPA components with in-memory DB for testing repositories.

6. How do you mock beans in Spring tests?

Use @MockBean to replace a bean in the test context.

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7. What is @TestConfiguration?
Used to define custom beans or overrides only for tests.

8. How do you test service layer methods?

Open in app

Use @ExtendWith(MockitoExtension.class) and @InjectMocks .

Search
9. What is the role of TestEntityManager in @DataJpaTest?
Simplifies interaction with JPA for test setups.

10. How do you test REST endpoints end-to-end?

Use @SpringBootTest(webEnvironment = RANDOM_PORT) + TestRestTemplate .

11. What is @Transactional used for in tests?

Rolls back DB changes after each test automatically.

12. How do you test Kafka or external systems without Docker?

Use embedded brokers or in-memory test implementations.

13. What are Testcontainers?

Java library to run real Docker containers for testing DBs, Kafka, etc.

14. How do you mock external API calls in Spring Boot tests?
Use MockRestServiceServer or WireMock .

15. How do you verify caching behavior in tests?

Use metrics, mock calls, or cache manager introspection.

16. How do you test retry logic or circuit breakers?

Simulate failures and verify fallback or retry behavior using mocks or test
configs.

17. What is @EnabledIf and how is it useful in tests?

Used to conditionally enable test methods based on properties or env.

18. How to write parameterized tests in Spring Boot?

Use JUnit 5’s @ParameterizedTest and @CsvSource or @MethodSource .

19. How to assert exceptions in Spring tests?

Use assertThrows in JUnit or ExpectedException rule in JUnit 4.

20. How to measure test coverage in Spring Boot projects?

Integrate with JaCoCo, SonarQube, or IntelliJ coverage tools.

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Perfect! Now diving into one of the most critical sections for microservices backend
engineers:

6. Microservices with Spring Boot (Design, Patterns, Interservice

Communication)
1. What are microservices?
Independent, loosely coupled services that handle specific business capabilities.

2. What are the benefits of microservices architecture?

Scalability, independent deployments, tech flexibility, fault isolation.

3. How do microservices communicate with each other?

Mostly via REST, gRPC, messaging (Kafka, RabbitMQ).

4. What is service discovery and why is it needed?

It enables dynamic lookup of service instances; useful in dynamic
environments.

5. What tools can you use for service discovery?

Netflix Eureka, Consul, Zookeeper.

6. What is Spring Cloud?

A set of tools for building microservices using Spring Boot (e.g., config,
discovery, gateway, resilience).

7. What is Spring Cloud Config?

Centralized configuration server for managing configs across environments.

8. How do you externalize configuration in Spring Boot microservices?

Use application.yml , Spring Cloud Config, environment variables.

9. How do you implement interservice REST communication in Spring Boot?

Use RestTemplate (legacy), WebClient (reactive), or Feign client.

10. What is Spring Cloud OpenFeign?

Declarative REST client for simplified HTTP communication between services.

11. What is circuit breaker pattern?

Prevents cascading failures by stopping calls to a failing service temporarily.

12. How do you implement a circuit breaker in Spring Boot?

Using Resilience4j or Spring Cloud Circuit Breaker.

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13. What is retry pattern in microservices?

Retry failed operations automatically with configurable delays.

14. How to apply retries in Spring Boot?

Use Spring Retry or Resilience4j retry module.

15. What is rate limiting and how is it done?

Restricts number of requests per time window; use API gateways, bucket/token
algorithms.

16. What is service registry and discovery using Eureka?

Eureka server acts as registry; services register and discover other services
dynamically.

17. How do you implement centralized logging in microservices?

Use ELK stack (Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana) or tools like Fluentd + Loki.

18. What is the role of Spring Cloud Gateway?

Provides routing, load balancing, and security at the edge of the microservice
system.

19. Difference between Spring Cloud Gateway and Zuul?

Gateway is more modern, reactive, and better integrated with Spring 5.

20. How do you version REST APIs in microservices?

Use URI path ( /v1/ ), headers, or content negotiation.

21. How do you trace requests across microservices?

Use tools like Sleuth (adds trace IDs), Zipkin or OpenTelemetry.

22. How do you secure microservices communication?

Use mutual TLS, OAuth2, or signed JWT tokens.

23. What is API Gateway and its role in microservices?

Entry point for clients; handles routing, authentication, rate limiting.

24. How do you handle partial failures in microservices?

Use fallback mechanisms, circuit breakers, retries, and compensation logic.

25. What are sagas in microservices?

Distributed transaction pattern; coordinates local transactions with
compensating actions.

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26. How do you implement sagas in Spring Boot?

Use event-driven architecture (Kafka + state machine) or orchestration using a
coordinator.

27. What is an orchestrator vs. choreographer in saga pattern?

Orchestrator controls flow; choreographer relies on events and each service
reacts.

28. How do you handle data consistency in microservices?

Use eventual consistency and sagas instead of distributed transactions.

29. How do you implement async communication between microservices?

Use message brokers like Kafka, RabbitMQ, or Pulsar.

30. What is idempotency and why is it important in microservices?

Ensures the same operation can be safely repeated without side effects.

Awesome! Now let’s dive into messaging — essential for resilient, async
microservices.

7. Kafka & Messaging Patterns in Spring Boot Microservices

1. What is Apache Kafka?
A distributed event streaming platform used for high-throughput messaging
between systems.

2. What are topics and partitions in Kafka?

Topics are categories for messages; partitions provide scalability and
parallelism.

3. How do producers and consumers work in Kafka?

Producers send messages to topics; consumers read messages from topics (by
partition).

4. What is Kafka broker?

A Kafka server that handles incoming messages and manages storage.

5. What is a Kafka consumer group?

A group of consumers sharing the load of reading messages from a topic.

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6. How do you ensure message ordering in Kafka?

Kafka preserves order within a partition.

7. How do you integrate Kafka with Spring Boot?

Use spring-kafka starter and configure @KafkaListener , producer, and
consumer factories.

8. What is @KafkaListener?
Annotation to mark a method as a Kafka message consumer.

9. How do you send messages to Kafka in Spring Boot?

Use KafkaTemplate.send(topic, message) .

10. How do you ensure reliable delivery in Kafka consumers?

Handle ackMode , implement retries, and commit offsets manually if needed.

11. What is offset in Kafka?

A unique ID for each message within a partition, used to track consumption.

12. How do you handle offset commits in Kafka?

Automatically (default) or manually using Acknowledgment.acknowledge() .

13. What is dead letter topic (DLT)?

A topic where failed messages go for separate handling.

14. How do you configure DLT in Spring Kafka?

Use DefaultErrorHandler with DeadLetterPublishingRecoverer .

15. What is idempotent producer in Kafka?

A producer that ensures no duplicate messages during retries.

16. How do you handle retries in Spring Kafka consumer?

Use RetryTemplate (deprecated) or DefaultErrorHandler with backoff.

17. What is a Kafka schema registry?

A service to manage Avro/JSON/Protobuf schemas for message validation.

18. How do you serialize/deserialize messages in Kafka?

Use StringSerializer , JsonSerializer , or Avro with Schema Registry.

19. How do you ensure message durability in Kafka?

Use acks=all , replication, and proper min.insync.replicas .

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20. What is the difference between at-most-once, at-least-once, and exactly-once

delivery?
— At-most-once: risk of loss
— At-least-once: risk of duplicates
— Exactly-once: guarantees one delivery (Kafka supports it via idempotence +
transactions)

21. How do you scale Kafka consumers in Spring Boot?

Use concurrency settings or multiple instances with same group ID.

22. What is the use of Kafka headers?

Carry metadata (like correlation IDs, type info) with messages.

23. How do you simulate Kafka in tests without Docker?

Use EmbeddedKafkaBroker provided by spring-kafka-test .

24. How do you log or trace Kafka messages?

Add interceptors or enrich with Sleuth/Zipkin-compatible trace IDs.

25. How do you implement request-reply over Kafka?

Use correlation ID headers, dedicated reply topic, and temporary consumers.

8. Spring Boot Advanced Concepts (Async, Caching, Validation,

Scheduling, DevOps)
🔄 Async & Scheduling
1. How do you make a method asynchronous in Spring Boot?
Use @Async on a method and enable @EnableAsync .

2. What is the return type of an @Async method?

Future , CompletableFuture , or void .

3. How do you schedule tasks in Spring Boot?

Use @Scheduled on a method and enable @EnableScheduling .

4. What are different @Scheduled options?

fixedRate , fixedDelay , cron .

5. What is the difference between fixedRate and fixedDelay?

— fixedRate : starts every X ms regardless of previous run
- fixedDelay : waits for previous execution to finish, then waits delay

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🚀 Caching
1. How do you enable caching in Spring Boot?
Add @EnableCaching and use @Cacheable , @CachePut , @CacheEvict .

2. What is @Cacheable?
Caches method return value based on key (usually method args).

3. What is @CachePut?
Updates the cache without skipping method execution.]

4. What is @CacheEvict?
Removes entries from the cache.

5. How do you configure cache manager in Spring Boot?

Use built-in ConcurrentMapCacheManager or configure Redis, Ehcache, Caffeine.

6. What is a custom key generator in caching?

A bean implementing KeyGenerator to customize cache keys.

7. How to disable cache during tests?

Override cache configuration or use profiles to turn off @EnableCaching .

✅ Validation
1. How do you validate user input in Spring Boot?
Use JSR-303 annotations like @NotNull , @Size with @Valid .

2. How to apply validation to nested objects?

Use @Valid inside the parent DTO.

3. What is the difference between @Valid and @Validated?

— @Valid is JSR-303 (no groups)
- @Validated supports validation groups from Spring.

4. How do you handle validation errors globally?

Implement @ControllerAdvice with @ExceptionHandler .

5. How to return custom error messages from validation failures?

Use BindingResult or customize MethodArgumentNotValidException .

🛠 DevOps & Configuration

1. What is Spring Boot Actuator?
Provides production-ready endpoints (health, metrics, env, etc.).

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2. How do you expose actuator endpoints securely?

Use management.endpoints.web.exposure.include + security configs.

3. How to override application properties per environment?

Use profiles like application-dev.yml , application-prod.yml .

4. What is the order of property resolution in Spring Boot?

Command-line > Env vars > application.yml > Defaults.

5. How do you use profile-specific beans?

Annotate beans with @Profile("dev") , etc.

6. How do you package a Spring Boot application?

With spring-boot-maven-plugin or spring-boot-gradle-plugin .

7. How do you deploy Spring Boot apps?

As a fat JAR, via cloud (AWS/GCP), containerized with Docker.

8. How do you monitor Spring Boot in production?

Use Actuator + Prometheus + Grafana + distributed tracing (Zipkin, Jaeger).

9. What is the use of Micrometer in Spring Boot?

Provides metrics collection and export to systems like Prometheus, Datadog.

Absolutely! Here’s a focused section on the Spring Cloud Ecosystem — a must-know

for microservices backend engineers. Let’s go deep on Spring Cloud Config, Eureka
(Discovery), Gateway, and Resilience4j.

9. Spring Cloud Ecosystem (Config, Discovery, Gateway, Resilience4j)

🌩 Spring Cloud Config
1. What is Spring Cloud Config?
A centralized configuration server to manage properties across microservices.

2. How do you set up a Spring Cloud Config Server?

Use @EnableConfigServer and point it to a Git repo or local file system.

3. How do client services connect to Config Server?

Using spring.cloud.config.uri in the client’s bootstrap.yml .

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4. What’s the difference between bootstrap.yml and application.yml ?

bootstrap.yml loads first and is used for config server settings.

5. How do you refresh config properties at runtime?

Use @RefreshScope and hit the /actuator/refresh endpoint.

6. What happens if the config server is down?

Clients can fail to start unless fail-fast=false is set or fallback configs are used.

7. How do you secure Spring Cloud Config Server?

Use basic auth, OAuth2, or API Gateway protection.

8. Can Spring Cloud Config auto-refresh values without endpoint hit?

Yes, via Spring Cloud Bus and message broker (like RabbitMQ/Kafka).

🔍 Spring Cloud Discovery (Eureka)

1. What is Eureka Server?
A registry where services register themselves and discover other services.

2. How do you create a Eureka server?

Add @EnableEurekaServer and appropriate dependencies.

3. How do you make a Spring Boot service discoverable?

Add @EnableEurekaClient and spring.application.name in config.

4. What is the difference between Eureka Client and Service Discovery?

Eureka Client registers itself and uses Eureka to discover others.

5. What is self-preservation mode in Eureka?

A mode to prevent mass eviction when heartbeat failures spike.

6. How does Eureka handle service health checks?

Uses built-in or custom health endpoints (from Actuator).

7. What is instance metadata in Eureka?

Custom key-value data like version, region, etc., associated with an instance.

🚪 Spring Cloud Gateway

1. What is Spring Cloud Gateway?
A non-blocking API Gateway built on Spring WebFlux, supports routing,
filtering, rate limiting.

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2. How does routing work in Gateway?

Defined in application.yml or Java DSL using route predicates.

3. What are filters in Spring Cloud Gateway?

Pre/post filters to modify requests/responses (like auth, headers, etc.).

4. What is a global filter vs route filter?

Global applies to all routes; route filters apply to specific ones.

5. How do you apply rate limiting in Gateway?

Use RequestRateLimiter filter with Redis backend.

6. How do you secure APIs in Gateway?

With spring-security + JWT filter or OAuth2 proxy integration.

7. Can you load balance routes in Gateway?

Yes, using service discovery ( lb://service-name syntax).

8. What is path rewriting in Gateway?

Modify incoming paths before forwarding, using RewritePath filter.

🛡 Resilience4j (Circuit Breaker, Retry, RateLimiter)

1. What is Resilience4j?
A fault tolerance library for Java with support for circuit breakers, retries, rate
limiting.

2. How to use Resilience4j in Spring Boot?

Add the dependency and use annotations like @CircuitBreaker , @Retry , etc.

3. What is the circuit breaker pattern?

Prevents a system from performing an operation that’s likely to fail.

4. What happens when a circuit breaker is open?

Calls fail immediately, fallback logic can be triggered.

5. What is the fallback method in Resilience4j?

A method defined to be called when the main one fails.

6. How do you configure Resilience4j?

Using application.yml (e.g., resilience4j.circuitbreaker.instances.myService ).

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7. What is the retry pattern in Resilience4j?

Automatically retries failed operations a defined number of times.

8. What is a rate limiter in Resilience4j?

Limits the number of calls in a defined period to protect services.

9. What is a bulkhead pattern?

Isolates failures and limits concurrent calls to protect the system.

10. How does time limiter work in Resilience4j?

Times out calls that take too long.

11. Can Resilience4j be integrated with metrics and tracing?

Yes, integrates well with Micrometer .

Awesome choice! This section is 🔥 for senior backend/microservices engineers,

especially those preparing for staff or system design interviews.

10. Performance, Observability & Production Readiness

⚙️ Performance Tuning
1. How do you analyze performance bottlenecks in Spring Boot apps?
Use tools like JFR, JProfiler, or VisualVM + enable Actuator metrics.

2. What is lazy initialization in Spring Boot?

Delays bean creation until it’s actually needed using spring.main.lazy-

initialization=true .

3. How to reduce startup time of Spring Boot apps?

Enable lazy init, reduce autoconfigurations, use spring-context-indexer .

4. What is the role of @Indexed in performance?

Improves component scanning using generated indexes (especially for large
apps).

5. How do you avoid N+1 queries in JPA?

Use @EntityGraph , fetch joins ( JOIN FETCH ), or batch fetching.

6. How do you optimize Hibernate performance?

Enable 2nd level cache, batch inserts/updates, set fetch size, use @Query instead
of criteria APIs for hot paths.

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7. How do you handle memory leaks in Spring Boot apps?

Use heap dumps ( jmap ), analyze with Eclipse MAT, avoid static references
holding Spring beans.

8. What is garbage collection tuning in Spring Boot?

Set JVM flags ( -XX:+UseG1GC , -Xms , -Xmx , etc.) based on load and latency
sensitivity.

🔍 Observability (Logs, Metrics, Tracing)

1. What is observability in microservices?
The ability to measure internal state from external outputs (logs, metrics,
traces).

2. What is the difference between monitoring and observability?

Monitoring = alerting on known issues; observability = debugging unknowns.

3. What are the 3 pillars of observability?

Logs, Metrics, Traces. (My personal favourite)

4. How do you enable logging in Spring Boot?

Logback is default; customize via logback-spring.xml or application.yml .

5. How do you structure logs for production?

Use JSON logs, correlation IDs, include service name/version.

6. How do you trace requests across services?

Use Spring Cloud Sleuth + Zipkin/Jaeger for distributed tracing.

7. What does Sleuth add to logs?

Trace ID, Span ID, Parent Span ID for tracking request flows.

8. What is the difference between trace ID and span ID?

Trace ID = end-to-end request; Span ID = individual operation.

9. How to collect metrics in Spring Boot?

Via Actuator + Micrometer, exporting to Prometheus, Datadog, New Relic, etc.

10. What are common out-of-box metrics from Actuator?

JVM memory, GC, thread counts, HTTP response times, database pool usage.

11. How to create custom metrics?

Use Micrometer’s Counter , Timer , Gauge , DistributionSummary .

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12. What is the role of tags/labels in metrics?

Add context to metrics (e.g., endpoint, status code, region).

🔐 Production Readiness
1. What is Spring Boot Actuator and why is it important?
Adds endpoints to monitor and manage applications in production.

2. How do you secure Actuator endpoints?

Restrict with roles, IPs, or API keys; expose only necessary endpoints.

3. What are critical Actuator endpoints to expose in production?

/health , /metrics , /prometheus , /info , /loggers , /env .

4. How do you dynamically change logging level in production?

Use /actuator/loggers/{logger-name} endpoint.

5. What should go in the /info endpoint?

Build info, Git commit, app version, environment.

6. How do you track application deployments?

Use info.* properties + log Git version and build number on startup.

7. What is the difference between readiness and liveness probes?

- Readiness: app is ready to receive traffic.
- Liveness: app is alive, not hung/crashed.

8. How to implement readiness and liveness probes in Spring Boot?

Via Actuator endpoints /actuator/health/readiness and /liveness .

9. How do you gracefully shutdown Spring Boot apps?

Enable server.shutdown=graceful , release resources in @PreDestroy .

10. What is connection draining in context of graceful shutdown?

Stop accepting new requests, allow in-flight ones to complete.

11. How do you manage secrets in production?

Use Vault, AWS Secrets Manager, or K8s secrets (not in properties files).

12. What is the purpose of Spring Cloud Vault?

Fetches secrets securely from HashiCorp Vault using AppRole or Token auth.

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13. What is chaos engineering and how does it apply to Spring apps?
Injecting failures (e.g., network loss, latency) to test resilience.

11. Advanced Topics (Reactive, Event-Driven, CI/CD Integration)

⚡ Reactive Programming (Spring WebFlux, Project Reactor)
1. What is reactive programming?
A programming paradigm for asynchronous, non-blocking, event-driven
applications.

2. What is Spring WebFlux?

A reactive web framework introduced in Spring 5 built on Project Reactor.

3. Difference between Spring MVC and WebFlux?

MVC is synchronous & servlet-based; WebFlux is async & reactive using Netty.

4. What is Mono and Flux ?

- Mono = 0 or 1 item
- Flux = 0 to N items (stream)

5. How does backpressure work in Reactor?

It’s a mechanism to control data flow and prevent overwhelming consumers.

6. What is Schedulers.parallel() vs Schedulers.boundedElastic() ?

- parallel() for CPU-bound

- boundedElastic() for blocking I/O operations (e.g., DB/file)

7. How do you test reactive code?

Use StepVerifier from Reactor Test.

8. How do you call a blocking API in WebFlux?

Wrap it with Mono.fromCallable() and schedule on boundedElastic .

9. How do you handle exceptions in WebFlux?

Using .onErrorResume() , .onErrorMap() or @ControllerAdvice +
WebExceptionHandler .

10. What is the role of @ResponseStatus and ResponseEntity in WebFlux?

Both are used for returning proper HTTP responses in reactive handlers.

11. How do you stream real-time data to the client?

Use Flux with MediaType.TEXT_EVENT_STREAM (SSE).
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12. What is the Reactor Context and how is it used?

Thread-local-like context propagation in reactive flows.

13. Is WebClient thread-safe?

Yes, it’s designed to be reused across multiple threads.

14. How does WebClient differ from RestTemplate?

WebClient is non-blocking and supports reactive streams.

📡 Event-Driven Architecture (EDA, Kafka, Spring Events)

1. What is event-driven architecture?
System components communicate by emitting and reacting to events.

2. Difference between event-driven and message-driven?

Event-driven = notify others something happened.
Message-driven = send data/command to do something.

3. What is the role of Kafka in event-driven systems?

Kafka acts as a distributed event log for asynchronous communication.

4. How do you produce/consume Kafka messages in Spring Boot?

Use spring-kafka with @KafkaListener , KafkaTemplate .

5. What is idempotency and why is it important in event consumers?

Ensures duplicate events don’t cause duplicate state changes.

6. How to implement exactly-once semantics in Kafka?

Enable idempotent producer + transactional consumer + stateful offset mgmt.

7. What is an outbox pattern?

Stores domain events in a DB table and publishes them reliably via a background
process.

8. How do you emit domain events in Spring?

Use ApplicationEventPublisher and listen via @EventListener .

9. Why is @TransactionalEventListener useful?

Fires events after transaction commits—guaranteeing consistency.

10. How do you handle schema evolution in Kafka messages?

Use Avro/Protobuf + Schema Registry.

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11. What is a dead letter topic in Kafka?

A topic to store failed or malformed messages for later inspection.

12. What are Kafka partitions and why are they important?
Enable parallelism and ordering within partitions.

13. How do you ensure ordering of events in Kafka?

Use the same partition key to route related events to the same partition.

🚀 CI/CD Integration
1. What are common CI tools used with Spring Boot?
GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Jenkins, CircleCI, Bitbucket Pipelines.

2. How do you build a Spring Boot project in CI?

Use Gradle/Maven wrapper with clean build and test steps.

3. What is the purpose of bootJar in Gradle?

Creates an executable fat jar with embedded Tomcat/Netty.

4. How do you run integration tests in CI without Docker?

Use Testcontainers with @DynamicPropertySource or in-memory DBs.

5. How do you create a test coverage report?

Use JaCoCo or Kotlin Kover in the build pipeline.

6. What is a typical CI pipeline for Spring Boot?

Steps: Checkout → Build → Test → Code Quality → Package → Deploy.

7. How do you secure secrets in CI pipelines?

Use CI tool’s built-in secrets manager or external vault.

8. What is blue-green deployment and how is it used?

Two production environments (blue & green); switch traffic with zero
downtime.

9. How to perform canary releases for Spring Boot apps?

Deploy to a small % of users/instances, monitor, then roll out further.

10. How do you deploy Spring Boot apps to Kubernetes?

Build container → push to registry → apply Helm/Manifest files.

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11. How do you manage config in CI/CD across environments?

Use Spring Profiles, Config Server, or environment-specific pipelines.

12. What is the role of application-prod.yml vs application.yml ?

Overrides base config for production-specific settings.

13. How do you verify deployment success post-deploy?

Health checks, synthetic monitoring, log analysis, smoke tests.

14. What’s a rollback strategy in CI/CD?

Re-deploy previous stable version or use feature flags to disable behavior.

15. How do you tag and version your Spring Boot releases?
Use semantic versioning ( 1.2.0 ), Git tags, and auto-versioning in CI.

🧠 Bonus: Architecture & Design Mindset

1. How do you architect reactive + event-driven microservices?
Use WebFlux for reactive APIs, Kafka for async events, and backpressure-aware
consumers.

2. When NOT to use WebFlux?

When you rely heavily on blocking libraries (JDBC, legacy APIs).

3. When to use event-driven over REST?

When eventual consistency is acceptable and loose coupling is desired.

4. What is CQRS and where does it fit in EDA?

Command Query Responsibility Segregation — writes via commands/events,
reads via optimized queries.

5. What is the role of feature flags in production?

Enable/disable functionality without redeploying code.

6. What is the circuit breaker’s place in CI/CD?

It helps apps degrade gracefully during rollout issues.

7. How do you run chaos tests before going live?

Inject latency/failure using ChaosMonkey4SpringBoot or Gremlin.

8. What’s the difference between rollback and remediation?

Rollback = undo deploy; remediation = fix on-the-fly (hotfix, config).

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9. How do you monitor a canary release safely?

Use separate metrics/alerts, logs, and tracing for that instance group.

10. How do you ensure release confidence in production?

Combine observability, automated testing, rollback strategies, and staged
deployment.

——-

🎉 That’s a full 300-question master list — from basics to bleeding edge, battle-
tested for microservices backend engineers like you.

Clap if found this comprehensive list useful and follow me for more such stories!.

** this is exhaustive list so please point out if there is any error and suggest for
improvement wherever possible/

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Written by Arvind Kumar

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Staff Engineer @Chegg || Passionate about technology || https://youtube.com/@codefarm0

Responses (5)

Meet2sudhakar

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What are your thoughts?

Nehaarika Maddi
Apr 19

Very Useful and crisp

5 Reply

M Kam
May 20

wow, nice! thanks a lot!

3 1 reply Reply

Sameer he
Apr 26

How does Spring Boot decide what to auto-configure?

this is very frequent asked interview question that i have see, maybe u can deep dive in future

3 Reply

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