Junior (1–3 years) · Module A
REST API Design Fundamentals
Resources, verbs, status codes, and what makes an API pleasant to integrate against.
What this session covers
- Model endpoints around resources (/customers/42/orders), not actions (/getOrdersForCustomer).
- Use HTTP verbs for what they mean: GET is safe and repeatable, POST creates, PATCH updates part of a resource, DELETE removes it.
- Status codes are part of the contract — 400 for a bad request, 401 for missing auth, 403 for forbidden, 404 for not found, 429 for rate limited, 5xx means it's the server's fault, not the caller's.
- A good error body tells the integrator what to fix, not just that something failed.
What junior FDE interviews look for
Junior Forward Deployed Engineer interviews go deeper on integration fundamentals — REST API design, OAuth2, webhooks, data mapping and SQL — and add customer-facing scenarios such as running a technical discovery call or handling pushback on what your API can do.