Top 30 Most Common Spring Interview Questions For Experienced You Should Prepare For
Written by
James Miller, Career Coach
Successfully navigating interviews for experienced Spring developer roles requires demonstrating a deep understanding of the framework, its ecosystem, and best practices. It's not just about knowing definitions but articulating how and why Spring features are used to build robust, scalable, and maintainable applications. Experienced candidates are expected to discuss architectural decisions, performance considerations, testing strategies, and how to leverage the full power of Spring Boot, Spring Data, Spring Security, and potentially reactive programming with Spring WebFlux. Preparation is key to showcasing your expertise and standing out from other candidates. This guide covers 30 frequently asked questions designed to test your knowledge and practical experience with the Spring ecosystem, helping you refine your responses and boost your confidence.
What Are spring interview questions for experienced?
spring interview questions for experienced candidates delve beyond basic concepts like dependency injection or what Spring Boot is. They probe your practical experience, problem-solving skills, and architectural understanding within the Spring ecosystem. Expect questions about designing RESTful APIs with Spring MVC/WebFlux, managing complex transactions, implementing robust security configurations, optimizing data access with Spring Data JPA, and troubleshooting performance issues. Interviewers want to see how you apply Spring principles in real-world scenarios, how you handle cross-cutting concerns using AOP, your experience with microservices patterns using Spring Cloud, and your ability to write clean, testable code. These questions assess your ability to lead, mentor, and contribute significantly to complex projects using Spring.
Why Do Interviewers Ask spring interview questions for experienced?
Interviewers ask spring interview questions for experienced candidates to evaluate the depth and breadth of their practical knowledge. They aim to understand if you can apply Spring effectively to solve complex business problems, design resilient systems, and make informed architectural decisions. Your ability to discuss trade-offs between different Spring modules or approaches (e.g., MVC vs. WebFlux, JPA vs. JDBC templates) demonstrates critical thinking. Questions about security, transaction management, and testing reveal your understanding of enterprise-grade application requirements. Discussing past project challenges and how you used Spring to overcome them provides insight into your problem-solving capabilities and experience with common pitfalls. Ultimately, these questions help interviewers determine if you possess the senior-level skills required for the role, including mentorship and technical leadership potential.
What is Spring Framework?
What are the major features of Spring Framework?
What are the different modules in Spring Framework?
What is Spring IOC Container?
What is Dependency Injection in Spring?
How does Spring handle bean lifecycle?
What is Spring MVC?
How does Spring MVC handle requests?
What are RESTful services? How does Spring support them?
What is the difference between REST and SOAP?
What is Spring Boot?
What is the difference between Spring and Spring Boot?
What is the purpose of a configuration file in Spring?
What is AOP (Aspect-Oriented Programming) in Spring?
What are aspects in AOP?
What are the different types of advice in AOP?
What is Spring JDBC?
What is Spring JPA?
What is Spring Security?
What is the role of Spring Data JPA?
How does Spring handle transactions?
What is Spring WebFlux?
What are Mono and Flux types in Spring WebFlux?
What is the use of WebClient in Spring WebFlux?
What is BeanFactory in Spring?
What is Application Context in Spring?
Can you explain the concept of scope in Spring?
What is Spring Cloud?
How does Spring support RESTful APIs best practices?
What are the best practices for designing RESTful APIs in Spring?
Preview List
1. What is Spring Framework?
Why you might get asked this:
This is a foundational question to gauge your basic understanding, even for experienced roles. It sets the stage for discussing more advanced concepts.
How to answer:
Define Spring as a comprehensive Java framework, highlight its core purpose (simplification, flexibility), and mention key principles like IoC/DI.
Example answer:
Spring is a widely used, open-source framework for building enterprise Java applications. It simplifies development through features like IoC/DI, AOP, and provides infrastructure support, enabling developers to focus on business logic rather than boilerplate code.
2. What are the major features of Spring Framework?
Why you might get asked this:
To see if you understand the breadth of Spring's capabilities and how its various parts contribute to application development.
How to answer:
List and briefly explain key features like Dependency Injection, IoC Container, AOP, Spring MVC, Spring Data, and Spring Security.
Example answer:
Major features include IoC/DI for managing dependencies, AOP for handling cross-cutting concerns, Spring MVC for web applications, Spring Data for simplified data access, Spring Security for authentication/authorization, and transactional support.
3. What are the different modules in Spring Framework?
Why you might get asked this:
This question tests your awareness of the framework's modular structure and how specific modules address different needs.
How to answer:
Mention core modules and specialized ones, grouping them logically (e.g., Core, Web, Data Access, AOP).
Example answer:
Spring is highly modular. Key modules include Spring Core (IoC, DI), Spring AOP, Spring Data Access (JDBC, ORM, JPA), Spring Web (MVC, WebFlux), Spring Security, and others like Test, Messaging, and Aspects.
4. What is Spring IOC Container?
Why you might get asked this:
Understanding the IoC Container is fundamental. This question checks if you grasp its role in managing beans and dependencies.
How to answer:
Explain its purpose: managing the lifecycle and configuration of application objects (beans) using IoC/DI principles.
Example answer:
The Spring IoC Container is the core of the framework. It manages application components (beans), handling their instantiation, configuration, and lifecycle. It uses Dependency Injection to wire objects together based on configuration metadata.
5. What is Dependency Injection in Spring?
Why you might get asked this:
DI is a cornerstone of Spring. This question assesses your grasp of this design pattern and its benefits.
How to answer:
Define DI as providing dependencies to an object instead of the object creating them itself. Explain its benefits: loose coupling, testability, and manageability.
Example answer:
Dependency Injection is a pattern where an object's dependencies are "injected" into it by an external entity (the IoC container), rather than the object creating them itself. This promotes loose coupling and improves testability.
6. How does Spring handle bean lifecycle?
Why you might get asked this:
Experienced developers need to understand how to hook into bean initialization and destruction phases for resource management or setup tasks.
How to answer:
Describe the key phases (instantiation, population, initialization, destruction) and mechanisms like callbacks (InitializingBean, DisposableBean) or annotations (@PostConstruct, @PreDestroy).
Example answer:
Spring manages the full lifecycle of beans, from instantiation to destruction. You can hook into this via interfaces (InitializingBean, DisposableBean) or annotations (@PostConstruct, @PreDestroy) for custom initialization logic after properties are set and before destruction.
7. What is Spring MVC?
Why you might get asked this:
Spring MVC is crucial for building web applications. This assesses your familiarity with its architecture and purpose.
How to answer:
Explain its role as a web framework following the Model-View-Controller pattern for building request-driven applications.
Example answer:
Spring MVC is a module for building web applications. It implements the MVC pattern, separating concerns into Model (data), View (presentation), and Controller (request handling) for organized web development.
8. How does Spring MVC handle requests?
Why you might get asked this:
To test your understanding of the request processing flow within Spring MVC, which is vital for troubleshooting and configuration.
How to answer:
Describe the flow: DispatcherServlet -> HandlerMapping -> Controller -> Service/Repository -> Model/View Name -> ViewResolver -> View.
Example answer:
Requests are handled by the DispatcherServlet, which delegates to a HandlerMapping to find the right Controller. The Controller processes the request, interacting with services/data layers, and returns a logical view name or Model, which is resolved by a ViewResolver to render the final response.
9. What are RESTful services? How does Spring support them?
Why you might get asked this:
REST is ubiquitous. This tests your knowledge of REST principles and how Spring facilitates building RESTful APIs.
How to answer:
Define REST (stateless, resource-based) and explain how Spring provides tools like @RestController, @RequestMapping, @GetMapping, etc., and content negotiation.
Example answer:
RESTful services follow the REST architectural style, focusing on resources and using standard HTTP methods. Spring provides excellent support via annotations like @RestController (combines @Controller and @ResponseBody), @RequestMapping, and specialized method annotations like @GetMapping, @PostMapping.
10. What is the difference between REST and SOAP?
Why you might get asked this:
To assess your understanding of different web service paradigms and when to choose one over the other, common in experienced roles.
How to answer:
Compare them based on architecture (REST is an architectural style, SOAP is a protocol), data format (REST often uses JSON/XML, SOAP strictly XML), transport (REST via HTTP, SOAP supports multiple), and complexity (REST is generally simpler).
Example answer:
REST is an architectural style, typically using HTTP and supporting various data formats (JSON, XML). It's stateless and simpler. SOAP is a protocol using XML, supporting multiple transports, and is more rigid, often requiring WSDL. REST is generally preferred for its simplicity.
11. What is Spring Boot?
Why you might get asked this:
Spring Boot is dominant in modern Spring development. This checks your awareness and likely experience with it.
How to answer:
Explain its purpose: simplifying Spring development setup and deployment, emphasizing convention over configuration, auto-configuration, and embedded servers.
Example answer:
Spring Boot is a project built on Spring that simplifies the development of stand-alone, production-grade Spring applications. It achieves this through auto-configuration, opinionated defaults, and embedding servers like Tomcat or Netty.
12. What is the difference between Spring and Spring Boot?
Why you might get asked this:
To ensure you understand Spring Boot's relationship to the core framework and why it's so popular for new projects.
How to answer:
Clarify that Spring is the core framework providing fundamental features, while Spring Boot is an opinionated extension that simplifies bootstrapping and configuration of Spring applications.
Example answer:
Spring is the foundational framework with core features like DI, AOP, etc. Spring Boot is a layer built on Spring that drastically reduces configuration effort, provides auto-configuration, and makes creating stand-alone applications easy. Boot is for using Spring more efficiently.
13. What is the purpose of a configuration file in Spring?
Why you might get asked this:
Configuration is crucial for adapting applications to different environments. This tests your knowledge of how Spring manages settings.
How to answer:
Explain their role in externalizing application settings, bean definitions (less common with Boot/JavaConfig), database connections, and environment-specific properties. Mention application.properties/application.yml.
Example answer:
Configuration files (application.properties, application.yml in Boot) externalize application settings, database credentials, server ports, and other environment-specific properties. This allows deploying the same application code to different environments without recompiling.
14. What is AOP (Aspect-Oriented Programming) in Spring?
Why you might get asked this:
AOP is used for cross-cutting concerns. This tests your understanding of how Spring implements it to manage tasks like logging, security, or transactions centrally.
How to answer:
Define AOP's goal: separating cross-cutting concerns from core business logic. Explain how Spring provides AOP support to achieve modularity for these concerns.
Example answer:
AOP is a paradigm in Spring used to modularize cross-cutting concerns like logging, security, or transaction management. It allows defining advice that applies to specific points in the execution flow of your application without cluttering business logic.
15. What are aspects in AOP?
Why you might get asked this:
To check if you understand the fundamental building block of AOP in Spring.
How to answer:
Define an aspect as a modularization of a cross-cutting concern, often implemented as a regular Spring bean annotated with @Aspect.
Example answer:
An aspect is a module encapsulating a cross-cutting concern. In Spring AOP, aspects are typically implemented as classes annotated with @Aspect, combining pointcuts (where to apply) and advice (what to do).
16. What are the different types of advice in AOP?
Why you might get asked this:
This tests your knowledge of how AOP logic is applied relative to method execution.
How to answer:
List and briefly describe the standard advice types: Before, After, AfterReturning, AfterThrowing, and Around.
Example answer:
Spring AOP provides several advice types: @Before (executes before a join point), @After (after, regardless of outcome), @AfterReturning (after successful execution), @AfterThrowing (after throwing an exception), and @Around (wraps the execution).
17. What is Spring JDBC?
Why you might get asked this:
To see if you're familiar with Spring's approach to database interaction at a lower level than ORM.
How to answer:
Explain that Spring JDBC simplifies database interaction using JDBC by handling boilerplate like connection management, statement creation, and result set processing.
Example answer:
Spring JDBC provides a layer of abstraction over JDBC, simplifying database operations. It handles connection management, resource cleanup, and exception handling, reducing boilerplate code compared to plain JDBC.
18. What is Spring JPA?
Why you might get asked this:
JPA is common for persistence. This checks your understanding of Spring's integration with JPA providers like Hibernate.
How to answer:
Explain that Spring JPA integrates with JPA (Java Persistence API) providers, offering simplified configuration and transaction management for ORM-based data access.
Example answer:
Spring JPA facilitates using JPA within a Spring application. It integrates with ORM tools like Hibernate or EclipseLink, simplifying setup, transaction management, and providing utility classes like JpaTemplate (though Data JPA is more common now).
19. What is Spring Security?
Why you might get asked this:
Security is critical for enterprise applications. This question assesses your knowledge of Spring's comprehensive security framework.
How to answer:
Describe its role in providing robust authentication, authorization, and protection against common web vulnerabilities. Mention its flexibility and features.
Example answer:
Spring Security is a powerful and customizable authentication and access-control framework. It provides solutions for authentication, authorization (method-level and URL-based), protection against common exploits like CSRF, and integrates well with various authentication providers.
20. What is the role of Spring Data JPA?
Why you might get asked this:
Spring Data JPA is a very popular abstraction. This tests your knowledge of how it further simplifies data access beyond standard JPA.
How to answer:
Explain how it reduces boilerplate code for repository implementations by automatically generating query methods based on interface names.
Example answer:
Spring Data JPA significantly simplifies data access layer implementation. By defining repository interfaces extending JpaRepository, you get CRUD operations and query methods automatically generated based on method names, drastically reducing boilerplate code.
21. How does Spring handle transactions?
Why you might get asked this:
Transaction management is vital for data integrity. This checks your understanding of Spring's declarative and programmatic transaction handling.
How to answer:
Explain Spring's transaction abstraction layer and highlight the use of @Transactional annotation for declarative transaction management. Mention propagation behaviors and isolation levels.
Example answer:
Spring provides a consistent transaction management abstraction. The most common way is declarative using the @Transactional annotation, which defines the scope, propagation behavior, and isolation level for methods, ensuring atomicity and consistency.
22. What is Spring WebFlux?
Why you might get asked this:
Reactive programming is becoming more common. This tests your awareness of Spring's non-blocking web stack.
How to answer:
Define Spring WebFlux as Spring's reactive web framework, built on Project Reactor, designed for building non-blocking, asynchronous applications suitable for high concurrency.
Example answer:
Spring WebFlux is a reactive web framework providing an alternative to Spring MVC for building non-blocking, asynchronous applications. It's built on Project Reactor and is suitable for highly concurrent loads where traditional blocking I/O isn't efficient.
23. What are Mono and Flux types in Spring WebFlux?
Why you might get asked this:
These are the core types in Project Reactor used by WebFlux. Understanding them is key to reactive programming in Spring.
How to answer:
Explain that Mono represents a stream emitting 0 or 1 item, while Flux represents a stream emitting 0 to N items. They are reactive sequences.
Example answer:
Mono and Flux are publishers from Project Reactor used in Spring WebFlux. A Mono represents a stream that emits at most one item (or an error signal), while a Flux represents a stream that can emit zero or more items over time.
24. What is the use of WebClient in Spring WebFlux?
Why you might get asked this:
To assess your knowledge of consuming reactive web services or APIs asynchronously.
How to answer:
Describe it as a non-blocking, reactive client for making HTTP requests, replacing the older RestTemplate for reactive scenarios.
Example answer:
WebClient is a non-blocking HTTP client introduced in Spring WebFlux. It provides a fluent API for making reactive web requests, making it suitable for consuming other reactive services or APIs asynchronously, replacing the blocking RestTemplate in reactive stacks.
25. What is BeanFactory in Spring?
Why you might get asked this:
This is a foundational concept, though ApplicationContext is more common. It checks your understanding of the basic container interface.
How to answer:
Define it as the most basic Spring IoC container interface, providing fundamental functionality for managing beans.
Example answer:
BeanFactory is the most basic interface for the Spring IoC container. It provides the core functionality for accessing beans configured in Spring, handling their instantiation and wiring, but with fewer features than ApplicationContext.
26. What is Application Context in Spring?
Why you might get asked this:
ApplicationContext is the standard container used in most Spring applications. This tests your familiarity with its enhanced capabilities.
How to answer:
Explain that it's a sub-interface of BeanFactory that offers additional enterprise-specific features like internationalization, event propagation, resource loading, and annotation support.
Example answer:
ApplicationContext is an extension of BeanFactory, providing richer features needed for enterprise applications. These include seamless integration with Spring's AOP, event publication, resource loading, and support for annotation-based configuration (@Autowired, etc.). It's the standard container.
27. Can you explain the concept of scope in Spring?
Why you might get asked this:
To ensure you understand how Spring manages the number of instances for a bean and its lifecycle implications.
How to answer:
Define scope as controlling the lifecycle and number of instances for a bean. Describe common scopes like Singleton (default) and Prototype, and briefly mention others like Request, Session, GlobalSession for web contexts.
Example answer:
Scope defines the lifecycle and visibility of a bean instance within the Spring container. The default is Singleton (one instance per container). Prototype creates a new instance every time it's requested. Others include request, session, and application in web contexts.
28. What is Spring Cloud?
Why you might get asked this:
With the prevalence of microservices, Spring Cloud experience is highly valued.
How to answer:
Describe Spring Cloud as a project that provides tools and abstractions for building common cloud-native patterns like service discovery, circuit breakers, distributed configuration, etc.
Example answer:
Spring Cloud is a collection of projects that simplify the development of cloud-native applications, particularly microservices. It provides solutions for common patterns like service discovery (Eureka, Consul), configuration management (Spring Cloud Config), circuit breakers (Hystrix, Resilience4j), and API gateways (Spring Cloud Gateway).
29. How does Spring support RESTful APIs best practices?
Why you might get asked this:
Experienced roles require designing good APIs, not just building endpoints.
How to answer:
Explain how Spring's features (annotations like @RestController, support for various media types, exception handling mechanisms) facilitate implementing REST principles and best practices like using correct HTTP methods and status codes.
Example answer:
Spring supports REST best practices through @RestController for resource-oriented controllers, method-specific annotations (@GetMapping, etc.) for correct HTTP verbs, @ResponseBody for direct response body writing, @ResponseStatus for status codes, and robust exception handling (@ExceptionHandler) to provide meaningful error responses.
30. What are the best practices for designing RESTful APIs in Spring?
Why you might get asked this:
This assesses your practical experience in designing usable and maintainable APIs.
How to answer:
Discuss key practices: resource-based URLs (nouns), using HTTP methods correctly (GET, POST, PUT, DELETE), proper status codes (2xx, 4xx, 5xx), versioning, documentation (Swagger/OpenAPI), and validation.
Example answer:
Key practices include using noun-based resource URLs (e.g., /users), leveraging HTTP methods appropriately (GET for retrieval, POST for creation, PUT for update, DELETE for removal), returning standard HTTP status codes (200, 201, 400, 404, 500), API versioning (e.g., /v1/users), and providing clear error messages.
Other Tips to Prepare for a spring interview questions for experienced
Beyond specific questions, practice discussing your past projects. Be ready to explain architectural choices you made, challenges you faced, and how you leveraged Spring features to solve them. Review core concepts like multithreading, database interactions, and testing, as these are often discussed in the context of Spring applications. "The best way to predict the future is to invent it," said Alan Kay; similarly, the best way to ace your interview is to actively prepare. Consider using tools like the Verve AI Interview Copilot to practice answering technical questions and get personalized feedback. The Verve AI Interview Copilot at https://vervecopilot.com can simulate interview scenarios, helping you refine your responses and build confidence. Don't just memorize answers; understand the underlying principles. Participate in mock interviews, perhaps even using the Verve AI Interview Copilot, to get comfortable articulating your thoughts under pressure. Review your GitHub projects or code samples you're proud of, as interviewers might ask you to walk through them. Confidence combined with preparation, perhaps honed with a tool like Verve AI Interview Copilot, is your greatest asset.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q1: How should I structure my answers for experienced roles?
A1: Be concise but provide depth. Explain the 'why' and 'how', referencing your experience or project examples.
Q2: Should I mention specific Spring versions or modules?
A2: Yes, reference versions and modules you have worked with to show practical experience.
Q3: How important is Spring Boot for experienced roles?
A3: Very important. Most modern Spring development uses Boot; expect questions requiring hands-on Boot experience.
Q4: Will they ask coding questions involving Spring?
A4: Often, yes. Be prepared to write or discuss code snippets demonstrating Spring usage (e.g., REST controller, Spring Data repository).
Q5: How can I demonstrate architectural skills with Spring?
A5: Discuss system design choices, how Spring modules fit in, scalability, resilience, and security considerations in your past projects.
