100 Common Questions in an Enterprise Architect Job Interview

If you’re being interviewed for a position related to enterprise architecture (EA), you're likely interested in learning materials that can offer a competitive advantage or just improve your fundamental knowledge. Thankfully, LeanIX is staffed by experts in the field who know exactly what’s expected from EAs throughout industries, and our resource library offers free guides and white papers on a number of long-standing and emerging EA topics.

But in addition to all of this, it’s always a good idea to exercise your interview muscles by answering a few common EA questions beforehand. And with that being said, this blog offers you 100 to choose from.

Just pace yourself.

100 Common EA Questions

Core EA questions

1. In your own words, explain to me what is enterprise architecture?

2. What stakeholders are typically involved in enterprise architecture?

3. What’s an architectural pattern?

4. How do you manage enterprise architecture in a fast-changing environment?

5. What technology trends are most impacting enterprise architecture?

6. What are the most important artefacts of an enterprise architecture?

7. Walk me through a time when you led enterprise change.

8. What personal qualities are valuable to have as an enterprise architect?

9. How do you sell the benefits of service-oriented architecture (SOA) to executives?

10. How does enterprise architecture support business goals and strategy?

11. How can you tell if an enterprise architecture is comprehensive?

12. Is it possible to calculate the return on investment (ROI) for SOA?

13. How do you go about identifying the key business activities in an organization’s value chain?

14. Can you share insights from past experiences creating architectural roadmaps? Specifically, how did you align project solutions with the roadmap?

15. Can you give an example where you championed a project? How did you justify the project to the business?

16. What was the most complex project in which you assumed a leadership role? What challenges did you face?

17. How would you go about appraising an enterprise architecture in terms of completeness of scope?

18. What metrics can be used to validate conformance of a solution to an architecture?

19. Can you provide an example where you helped establish an IT governance process?

20. Can you provide an example in which you provided break-through architectural thinking?

21. Can you give an example where you applied strategic architectural thinking to impact business results?

22. Can you give an example where you championed a business stakeholder’s requirement?

23. Is it possible to calculate ROI for enterprise architecture?

24. Can you give an example in which you evangelized architectures and strategies to executives?

25. Can you share an example in which you allocated architectural activities to multiple architects?

26. Can you give an example where you guided an organization’s strategy?

27. Can you give an example where you pointed out weaknesses in technical plans?

28. Can you give an example where you drove a business initiative by promoting cross-organizational participation?

29. Can you provide examples where you applied different data modeling techniques for different purposes?

30. Can you provide me an example where you proposed a solution that satisfied numerous business requirements? What architectural alternatives did you consider?

31. Have you ever introduced a new standard into an organization? What was it? How did you ensure the adoption of the standard?

32. Give me an example where someone challenged your architectural decisions.

33. What was the most difficult architectural question anyone ever asked you? How did you answer it?

34. Give me an example where you defined and executed a strategy.

35. What IT industry trends are you most interested in at the moment?

36. How do you maintain your skills and stay current with IT trends?

37. Have you ever mediated opposing architectural viewpoints?

38. What tools have you used to create and manage architectural artefacts?

39. Can you describe a situation where a key decision you made was wrong? How did you correct the situation?

40. Can you describe a document you created that demonstrated your ability to effectively communicate architectural decisions? Did the document generate two-way communication?

Enterprise architecture frameworks

41. What is your favorite Enterprise Architecture framework? Why?

42. Do you have experience with any TOGAF Certified Tools?

43. What four architecture domains does TOGAF deal with?

44. What is the TOGAF Enterprise Continuum?

45. Can you describe the TOGAF architecture compliance review process?

46. Can you give me a recent example of your SOA projects? How did you handle security?

47. What is an SOA service contract and why is it important?

48. What is the difference between services and components?

49. What SOA design patterns have you used in the past?

50. What design principles do you use when architecting SOA services?

51. How can you achieve a loose coupling of services?

52. How do you define a successful SOA?

53. What works better: top-down or bottom-up service identification?

54. How can services supporting long-running processes be scaled effectively?

55. How can an SOA avoid redundant service logic?

Methodologies

56. What is the difference between agile and scrum?

57. Give me an example where you worked with stakeholders to document functional and non-functional requirements. How did you prioritize the requirements?

58. Can you give an example where you worked with a project manager to identify elements of a project plan that put the project plan at risk?

59. What is a project communication plan?

60. What is a project charter? What essential elements should be captured in a project charter?

IT service management

61. How would you migrate a traditional application to cloud infrastructure?

62. How might IT service management processes differ between a small-scale and large-scale enterprise?

63. Can you give an example where you prepared a risk assessment for IT services?

64. Can you name three types of SLA?

65. What is network policy enforcement?

66. What is an operational level agreement?

67. What is ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library)?

68. What is the difference between Incident Management and Problem Management?

69. What is the difference between change and release management?

70. What are the key activities associated with capacity management

Security

71. What is cross-site scripting?

72. Can you give me an architectural overview of public-key cryptography?

73. From a security perspective, what is more important to focus on: threats or vulnerabilities?

74. What is the goal of enterprise information security?

75. What is federated identity management?

Solution Architecture

76. What innovative solutions have you created?

77. How do you version a service inventory?

78. If you had to both compress and encrypt data for transmission, which would you do first? Why?

79. Can you explain the bridge pattern?

80. What is a design pattern?

81. What is the difference between object-oriented and aspect-oriented design?

82. In Java, when should you use an interface and when an abstract class?

83. What is the difference between an abstract factory and factor design patterns?

84. What is a UML (Unified Modeling Language) deployment diagram?

85. What factors impact project success?

86. Can you describe the role of a solution architect during the different phases of the SDLC (Software Development Life Cycle)?

General

87. Are you a big-picture thinker? Can you give me an example?

88. What do you know about our company?

89. What do you do to build and manage your professional network?

90. Have you ever worked within an organization that has a siloed structure? How did you deal with it?

91. What was the best project you ever worked on? How did you contribute?

92. How do you deal with difficult people?

93. What are the three tools you need most to do your job?

94. Can you describe your leadership style?

95. Have you ever mentored someone?

96. Where do you see your career in five years?

97. What is your experience in the area of IT financial management?

98. Have you ever worked with a SaaS-based Enterprise Architecture management tool?

99. What software do you think our company should adopt to elevate its EA?

100. What conferences do you attend to enrich your knowledge of EA and expand your professional network?

Enterprise Architecture