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Site Reliability Engineer simulation

On call when Tatkal opens

Yatrik · TravelFresher / 1–3 yrs 40 min

You're the secondary on-call SRE at Yatrik, a train-booking app, on a Monday when Tatkal bookings open at 10 AM. Latency explodes minutes in. Write a log summariser in a real editor (JavaScript, TypeScript or Python) to find the endpoint that's hurting, choose a mitigation while failed bookings pile up, write the status update customers see, and keep the postmortem blameless when a VP wants a name.

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You can pause and come back. Time in the simulation only moves when you act.

Yatrik · Site Reliability Engineer IDay 1 · 09:00 AM

Your first message

Arjun BoseSenior SRE (primary on-call)09:00 AM

Tatkal in an hour

Morning. You're secondary on-call with me today. Tatkal opens at 10. What will you be watching, and is there anything in the change log that worries you?

Your objective

Keep Tatkal bookings working, recover fast when they don't, and leave the system safer than you found it.

Your day

What's scheduled. More will come up depending on what you do.

  1. 09:00 AMTatkal in an hour · Arjun Bose
  2. 10:01 AM🚨 Booking p95 at 4.2s, errors climbing · Arjun Bose
  3. 10:50 AMYour call: mitigation · Arjun Bose
  4. 01:20 PMWho did this? · Rahul Kapoor
  5. 02:30 PMPostmortem draft · Arjun Bose
  6. 05:00 PMHandover · Arjun Bose

Before you start

  • It's 9:00 AM on Monday. Tatkal opens at 10:00 AM. The day ends at 6:00 PM.
  • Arjun is primary on-call and your lead. Nisha leads customer support. Rahul is the VP of Engineering.
  • When the incident hits, write the log summariser in JavaScript, TypeScript or Python: switch any time in the editor. Visible tests are yours to run; hidden tests run when you submit.
  • Every minute of a Tatkal outage is failed bookings, angry travellers and refunds.

You'll work in

Slack Jira VS Code Confluence Drive PagerDuty
Code editor + testsWritten deliverableJavaScript · TypeScript · Python

Each app is laid out like the tool most teams in this role use. Simverse isn't affiliated with these companies.

People you'll work with

  • Arjun Bose · Senior SRE (primary on-call)
  • Nisha Verma · Customer Support Lead
  • Rahul Kapoor · VP of Engineering
  • Divya Menon · Platform Engineer

What's assessed

  • Problem understanding

    Works out what is actually required, including constraints and unstated edge cases.

  • Problem solving

    Forms hypotheses and makes evidence-based decisions instead of random changes.

  • Coding

    Writes correct, readable, proportionate code that meets the requirements.

  • Debugging

    Finds the root cause from evidence, recovers from failures and verifies the fix.

  • Testing

    Verifies work with tests, covers edge cases and catches regressions.

  • Adaptability

    Changes approach when the evidence says so and responds to new information.

  • Autonomy

    Makes progress independently and uses hints and AI with judgment and verification.

  • Communication

    Explains reasoning, decisions and trade-offs clearly.