GeneralBackendHigh signal
Distributed Systems
Systems made up of multiple independent computers that coordinate over a network to work as one, instead of running on a single machine — introducing challenges like partial failures and network delays that don't exist on one box.
Think of it like
Like a restaurant chain with multiple kitchens serving one shared menu and reputation — coordinating them (consistent recipes, shared inventory) is far harder than running one kitchen alone.
Junior or senior?
Junior sounds like
Has read about distributed systems but not worked on one in production.
Senior sounds like
Can describe a specific failure mode — a network partition, a race condition — they actually hit.
Ask them
“Tell me about a bug or incident that only happened because your system was distributed across multiple machines.”