API Gateway vs Service Mesh: When to use which?

Senior architecture is about trade-offs, scalability, and long-term viability. It's the 'Art of the Possible'.

At the senior level, you aren't just looking at the 'happy path'. You are designing for failure. This involves understanding consensus protocols (Raft/Paxos) for distributed state, implementing Sagas for long-running transactions without 2PC, and choosing between Event Sourcing and State-based persistence based on audit requirements. You must balance developer cognitive load against system complexity. Architecture at this level is often about deciding what not to build.