"How do you handle technical debt?"
Data systems accumulate debt:
- Pipelines written years ago with outdated tools
- Undocumented transformations nobody understands
- Fragile dependencies that break regularly
Your story should show:
- How you identified the debt (metrics, incidents, developer pain)
- How you made the case for addressing it (business impact)
- How you balanced modernization with feature work
- Incremental improvement vs big-bang rewrite decision
Be realistic. You can't fix everything. Show prioritization.