The goal of this assignment is to verify that you can apply software engineering techniques in practice. To do so, we ask that you build a backend for a hypothetical part of our product.
Modern greenhouses contain lots of sensors to measure the climate in the greenhouse and the environment around the plants. The environment consists of parameters such as air temperature, humidity, CO2 concentration and access to water and nutrients. These parameters are influenced by conditions outside, as well as control mechanisms inside the greenhouse. To achieve the right environment, the grower manipulates mechanical components of the greenhouse based on forecasted external weather conditions. These components include but are not limited to: screens, ventilation (through opening windows) and heating systems.
We want to give growers insights in the current and historical environmental parameters so they can assess the performance of their growing strategy. I.e. did they manage to keep the temperature, humidity etc. within the right bounds to create the ideal growing conditions for the plants. To be able to build a dashboard with these insights, we need a backend that exposes the right information through one or more API endpoints that can be consumed by the frontend.
For this assignment, you're going to build a part of the backend that deals with meteo (weather) data.
Your solution should include the following functionality:
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An API endpoint that can be used to push raw data (according to the provided format) from the climate computer to your service (see below for access to data)
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One or more API endpoints to expose the meteo data in a sane and convenient format for consumption by the frontend. The frontend expects at least the following functionality:
- Expose the latest weather conditions (i.e. show what's happening now)
- Expose the development of the weather parameters over the last 24h in 15 min increments
- Expose the average for each of the weather parameters for the last 24h
- Expose the development of the weather parameters over the last 7 days in 1 day increments (average per day)
- Expose the average of the weather parameters over the last 7 days
Some hints and tips:
- It's up to you how you store the measurements. Can be in-memory, in a database, etc.
- The format of the raw data is not necessarily the ideal format to expose the data in for the frontend. Consider the design of your API output well!
- Consider all aspects of API design, including but not limited to: paths, return codes, input/output formats etc.
- Store the sensor data in a persistent way (i.e. not in-memory) so it's available between restarts
- Add authentication between the API and allow for different roles between the "write" endpoint and the "read" endpoints
- Provide a way to ingest raw data in bulk
- Use Python 3.10 or higher or use Golang 1.19 or higher
Important
At Source, we're increasingly moving towards Golang as our main language for backend development outside of building ML models. For that reason, we consider it a huge plus if you develop your solution in Golang.
- Maintainability is favoured over performance. No complex performance optimizations should be needed. Another developer should be able to continue where you left off
- It should be possible to run the project (and all of its components) on any machine, including our laptops
- This assignment was designed to be completed in 6-8h. The evaluation will take into account the choices you make and what you focus on given the time you have. However, it's up to you if you spend less or more time on it.
- Please make sure the final commit to your repository is done at least 24 hours before the start of your interview
This assignment should be delivered in the following way:
- All code is pushed to your private copy of this repository.
- Documentation is provided in the README.md on how the solution works, and how to run and test it.
- Any information, (dummy)-data, files, and other assets that are needed to run this project, are provided in this repository.
The solution will be assessed on the following criteria:
- How is your code structured? Is it easy to read and follow?
- How clear is the documentation?
- How is the API design? Is it easy for a frontend developer to use?
- What does your (internal) data model look like? How does your solution represent and store data?
- Are there any clear bugs in your code?
- How does the solution perform?
- Can you clearly and concisely describe the process you have followed and the choices you have made?
- Can you describe the biggest short-comings of your solution and which steps could be taken to improve on that?
NOTE: your experience as a software engineer influences our expectations on the completeness of your solution - both in terms of requirements and bonus objectives met. In other words: we expect different things from someone with 1 year of experience than from someone with 10 years of experience.
- The required raw data to test your solution can be found through this link: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1TV20EVuxcmaqro7e0HfmX2j6HtILNwXB?usp=sharing