Binary Searchmedium45 minMobile Engineer

Retry Minimum Feasible Throughput

Mobile Engineer signal: binary search on answer + monotonic predicate in a network retry queue context. This is a ProdMatch-owned mobile engineer drill, framed as a March 2026 ServiceNow Connectivity simulation, not a copied platform question.

Company context

ServiceNow · Connectivity

Freshness

March 2026

Product surface

network retry queue

ProdMatch interview simulation based on product-team patterns; not a claim of a real company question.

Question

For network retry queue, choose the minimum processing rate so all requests finish before deadline. Each worker can process rate units per minute, rounded up per item.

Input

Work item sizes and deadline minutes.

Output

Minimum integer rate.

Constraints

1 <= items.length <= 200000
1 <= item size <= 1e9
Deadline is at least items.length.

Concepts

offline sync
local cache
gesture streams
binary search on answer
monotonic predicate

sizes [3,6,7,11], deadline=8 -> 4

Approach

Try framing your own approach first. The 30 seconds you think before peeking is where learning happens.

Clean Solution

Reveal the approach first.

How well did you understand?

Your rating tunes when this problem shows up again.

Common Mistakes

Use low + (high - low) // 2 to avoid overflow.
The predicate must be monotonic or binary search is invalid.

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