data residency

A trade-off question where both sides have serious arguments. The interviewer wants the dimensions that decide it, and a recommendation that depends on facts you would go and get.

There is no single best model, and the choice will change within a year. Principal answers design a selection process and an architecture that make the next choice cheap.

A design question with a constraint dropped halfway. The interviewer wants to see residency flow through every component: model calls, logs, caches, embeddings, evals and support access.

Sovereign deployments combine product, infrastructure, security, policy and commercial questions. Principal answers separate what the customer needs (control, residency, continuity, local language) from what they ask for, and design a deployment model the company can sustain.

Regional capacity is fragmented capacity, and four providers charge about 10% for it. Price it, define exactly what you promise, and tell customers which models arrive late in their region.