Should questions related to design be included in the general technical interview block for Senior developer level candidates?

For senior developers, including questions on design in technical interviews is important and recommended. At this level, candidates are expected not only to know syntax and algorithms but also to be able to build architecture, make decisions on code structure, scalability, and maintainability of the system.

Design questions help assess:

• Ability to analyze requirements and build architecture.
• Knowledge of design patterns and their application.
• Experience working with scalable and fault-tolerant systems.
• Ability to make trade-off decisions between performance, complexity, and support.

Example question: "How would you design an order processing system considering high load and the need for scalability?"