LIGHTNINGHIRE
Evaluates engineers who can design, build, operate, and improve production backend systems.
Weighted signals · 100/100
Backend system design
25
Designs reliable services, APIs, data models, and service boundaries
Production ownership
20
Owns incidents, observability, reliability, and operational follow-through
Core language depth
15
Shows sustained depth in the stack used by the team
Data and persistence
15
Understands databases, queues, caching, and consistency tradeoffs
Technical leadership
15
Leads designs, mentors others, and improves engineering practices
Communication
10
Writes clear design docs, reviews, postmortems, or technical explanations
Must-haves
Disqualifiers
Interview probes