It depends is a senior answer, if you finish the sentence

Junior engineers pick the pattern they know. Mid-level engineers pick the pattern that is popular. Senior engineers ask what constraints make the choice for them.

How would you persist this data? The junior answer names a framework. The senior answer names the deciding factors first: access patterns, migration cost, query complexity, team familiarity, and only then a choice, held loosely.

This is not hedging. It depends, full stop, is evasion. It depends on these three things, and given what you have told me I would choose X, and here is what would change my mind, is the most senior sentence in engineering.

Practice it deliberately: take five technical decisions from your current codebase and write, for each, what it depended on and what would have flipped the choice. That document is interview preparation, promotion evidence, and better engineering, all in one exercise.