Advanced Spring Boot REST Interview Questions for Senior Engineers

Advanced Spring Boot REST Interview Questions for Senior Engineers Work through these 12 questions out loud. Open any question for the full model answer, the trap to avoid, and the follow-up a panel usually asks.

  1. What is the difference between JPA and Hibernate?

    JPA is the API contract; Hibernate is the engine under Spring Boot by default. You write @Entity per JPA spec; Hibernate handles SQL generation. Spring Data JpaRepository adds...

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  2. How does Stream API parallel stream work?

    parallelStream() splits work across common pool threads. Good for CPU-heavy map on large in-memory collections. Bad for small lists, IO inside stream, or ordered stateful...

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  3. How do you test Spring Boot applications?

    Unit test services with Mockito — no Spring. @WebMvcTest + MockMvc for controller contract. @DataJpaTest for repository queries. @SpringBootTest + Testcontainers for critical...

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  4. How do you version REST APIs?

    We use /api/v1/users for clarity. Non-breaking: add optional JSON fields. Breaking: launch v2 path, maintain v1 for 6 months with Deprecation header. Spring maps...

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  5. Explain sealed classes and their purpose in Java 17+.

    sealed interface Shape permits Circle, Rectangle limits who implements Shape. Compiler verifies switch (Shape s) covers all cases — no default needed. Use for domain variants...

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  6. Explain structured concurrency and why it matters.

    In a request handler, open StructuredTaskScope, fork fetchUser and fetchOrders, join both — if orders fail, user fetch cancelled automatically. Safer than manual Future...

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  7. How do Spring Boot Actuator health probes work with Kubernetes?

    Enable probes, configure K8s readinessProbe on /actuator/health/readiness, liveness on /actuator/health/liveness. Custom HealthIndicator for critical deps on readiness group...

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  8. @RestController vs @Controller?

    @Controller is for traditional MVC — return "user/list" view name. @RestController adds @ResponseBody so return types become JSON/XML body — standard for REST APIs. Use...

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  9. What is ProblemDetail (RFC 7807) in Spring 6 error handling?

    @ExceptionHandler(NotFoundException.class) ProblemDetail handle(NotFoundException ex) { return ProblemDetail.forStatusAndDetail(NOT_FOUND, ex.getMessage()); } — consistent 404...

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  10. springdoc-openapi vs legacy springfox — what should new projects use?

    Add springdoc-openapi-starter-webmvc-ui dependency. Annotate with @Operation, @Schema on DTOs. Disable in prod via springdoc.api-docs.enabled=false or secure endpoint. Generate...

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  11. How would you design a rate-limited REST API?

    API gateway or filter applies token bucket per API key — Redis stores tokens with TTL. Exceeding limit returns 429 + Retry-After. Different tiers per plan. Log rejections for...

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  12. How do you handle exceptions globally in Spring?

    Create @RestControllerAdvice with @ExceptionHandler(MethodArgumentNotValidException.class) returning 400 + field map, NotFoundException → 404, generic Exception → 500 without...

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