MephisQuiz: Free Scenario-Based Quiz Platform for Engineering Role Assessment

What MephisQuiz Offers

MephisQuiz is a free skill assessment platform built by an SRE professional to help engineers identify knowledge gaps through scenario-based questions rather than definition recall. The platform currently covers four role tracks with 12 progressive question banks per role.

Available Role Tracks

• SRE — SLOs/error budgets, incident response, observability, capacity planning, chaos engineering
• Backend — APIs (REST/GraphQL/gRPC), databases, auth patterns, caching, microservices, system design
• DevOps — Docker, Kubernetes, CI/CD pipelines, Terraform/IaC, networking, deployment strategies
• Frontend — React, Next.js, TypeScript, state management, accessibility, performance, SSR/SSG

How It Works

Users sign up for free, pick their role(s), and set experience levels from Beginner to Expert. Questions are filtered to the user's level, with probe questions from the next level to recommend when to level up. After each quiz, users receive a breakdown by topic and difficulty showing where they dropped points.

The platform includes optional timed modes with XP bonuses: +50% for 5-minute speed runs and +25% for 10-minute runs. A global leaderboard ranks users by XP with country flags and role badges.

Question Design

Questions are scenario-based rather than definition-focused. For example: "your service SLO is breached after 55 minutes of downtime in a 30-day window, what does this mean and what should your team do" instead of "what does SLO stand for." Every answer includes detailed explanations of why the correct answer is right and why each wrong answer is wrong.

Development Details

The developer used Claude AI extensively as a pair programmer throughout the entire stack: Next.js frontend, FastAPI backend, Terraform infrastructure, and creation of 860+ questions across all question banks. The tech stack includes Next.js 16 with Tailwind 4, FastAPI with PostgreSQL, self-hosted on AWS with Cloudflare in front, running at approximately $25/month.

Future Roadmap

Additional engineering tracks planned include Security Engineering (OWASP, pentesting, compliance), Data Engineering (ETL, Spark, Kafka), Platform Engineering (internal dev platforms, service mesh, DX), Mobile Development (React Native, iOS/Android, app architecture), and QA & Testing (test automation, E2E, quality strategy).