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Run a schema migration on a customer's live production database, zero downtime. Walk me through it.

The pattern is expand-contract; the interview is everything around it: the backfill that locks the table, the rollback nobody rehearsed, and the fact that it's the customer's database, not yours. One named technique carries the whole answer.

Updated Sep 2026 · Grounded in real Forward Deployed Engineer interview loops and written to a senior-engineer editorial bar.

The pattern is expand-contract; the interview is everything around it: the backfill that locks the table, the rollback nobody rehearsed, and the fact that it's the customer's database, not yours. One named technique carries the whole answer.

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