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Software Engineer System Design Interview Questions

Review this list of 13 system design software engineer interview questions and answers verified by hiring managers and candidates.
  • Amazon logoAsked at Amazon 
    Video answer for 'Design Instagram.'
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    +49

    "Very well done."

    Vijay M. - "Very well done."See full answer

    Software Engineer
    System Design
    +3 more
  • Amazon logoAsked at Amazon 
    Video answer for 'Design a reservation and payment system for a parking garage.'
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    "Since there is a need for the data to be accurate and consistent without any latency to allocate a spot, can't the data be synchronously synced to replicas after every write as the number of writes are not many per min, instead of read lock phenomena Let me know if i am on a wrong thought here."

    Chitapuram N. - "Since there is a need for the data to be accurate and consistent without any latency to allocate a spot, can't the data be synchronously synced to replicas after every write as the number of writes are not many per min, instead of read lock phenomena Let me know if i am on a wrong thought here."See full answer

    Software Engineer
    System Design
    +2 more
  • OpenAI logoAsked at OpenAI 
    Video answer for 'Design ChatGPT'
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    "The addition of an intermediate "sanitization" ML is something Neeraj used in the Uber Eats design and again seems kind of outside the scope here and redundant. This can simply be built into the AI response model to save a step. It's not clear what benefit this step provides, and he basically said we should have it "just because it would be good" and there's no concrete reasoning why to include it. Adding a Kafka queue to handle the thumbs-down ratings? For what purpose do you need a queue othe"

    Robert H. - "The addition of an intermediate "sanitization" ML is something Neeraj used in the Uber Eats design and again seems kind of outside the scope here and redundant. This can simply be built into the AI response model to save a step. It's not clear what benefit this step provides, and he basically said we should have it "just because it would be good" and there's no concrete reasoning why to include it. Adding a Kafka queue to handle the thumbs-down ratings? For what purpose do you need a queue othe"See full answer

    Software Engineer
    System Design
    +1 more
  • Amazon logoAsked at Amazon 
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    "Rate Limiter is to limit the number of request from a particular IP Address. Rate limiter will block the IP address to reduce the load on server. It should be highly available and handle concurrent requests. Blocked IP addresses should be kept in a pool which is present in shared cache. We need to keep threshold value after it reaches threshold value it should start blocking IP address. All these ip address to be kept in No SQL DB. Batch will run that will clear the cache and delete all the bloc"

    Ashish G. - "Rate Limiter is to limit the number of request from a particular IP Address. Rate limiter will block the IP address to reduce the load on server. It should be highly available and handle concurrent requests. Blocked IP addresses should be kept in a pool which is present in shared cache. We need to keep threshold value after it reaches threshold value it should start blocking IP address. All these ip address to be kept in No SQL DB. Batch will run that will clear the cache and delete all the bloc"See full answer

    Software Engineer
    System Design
    +2 more
  • Booking.com logoAsked at Booking.com 
    Video answer for 'Design a metrics and logging service.'
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    M

    "For somebody who needs accessibility accommodation, this doesn't have a transcript so it is not useful to me."

    Shivastuti K. - "For somebody who needs accessibility accommodation, this doesn't have a transcript so it is not useful to me."See full answer

    Software Engineer
    System Design
    +2 more
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  • Adobe logoAsked at Adobe 
    Video answer for 'Design a typeahead box for a search engine.'
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    "It would have been more interesting to focus on the system design rather than the Trie DS, Interviewee could have just mentioned the Trie and passed to things more important. Interviewee should have focused on the factors on which he wants to scale the API servers, popularity of the query parts ? region may be ? A hash of many factors ? Caches should have definitely be discussed, Cache eviction policies, Cache invalidation managements... Interviewee should have mentioned which kind of API pro"

    Aymen D. - "It would have been more interesting to focus on the system design rather than the Trie DS, Interviewee could have just mentioned the Trie and passed to things more important. Interviewee should have focused on the factors on which he wants to scale the API servers, popularity of the query parts ? region may be ? A hash of many factors ? Caches should have definitely be discussed, Cache eviction policies, Cache invalidation managements... Interviewee should have mentioned which kind of API pro"See full answer

    Software Engineer
    System Design
    +1 more
  • Salesforce logoAsked at Salesforce 
    Video answer for 'Design Ticketmaster'
    Software Engineer
    System Design
  • Amazon logoAsked at Amazon 
    Video answer for 'Design Uber Eats.'
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    +5

    "basic drew the diagram"

    Aswath B. - "basic drew the diagram"See full answer

    Software Engineer
    System Design
    +2 more
  • Canva logoAsked at Canva 
    Video answer for 'Design a key-value store.'
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    "Simple file system ( Hash Map , LSM trees), and consistent hashing. I failed to discuss about conflicts ( Versioning)"

    V V. - "Simple file system ( Hash Map , LSM trees), and consistent hashing. I failed to discuss about conflicts ( Versioning)"See full answer

    Software Engineer
    System Design
    +2 more
  • Netflix logoAsked at Netflix 
    Video answer for 'Design a streaming service like Netflix.'
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    "using a relational database isn't a good choice for this system! we need more availability here than consistency (CAP theorem)"

    Anonymous Capybara - "using a relational database isn't a good choice for this system! we need more availability here than consistency (CAP theorem)"See full answer

    Software Engineer
    System Design
    +1 more
  • Amazon logoAsked at Amazon 
    Video answer for 'Design a URL shortener.'
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    "I studied Exponent's TinyURL system design video. My interviewer was asking many detailed questions on API design, schema, as well as data required to store. I found system design questions are bit high level instead of depth. I think should have detail design of API, schema and some additional flavors."

    Yag S. - "I studied Exponent's TinyURL system design video. My interviewer was asking many detailed questions on API design, schema, as well as data required to store. I found system design questions are bit high level instead of depth. I think should have detail design of API, schema and some additional flavors."See full answer

    Software Engineer
    System Design
    +1 more
  • Google logoAsked at Google 
    Video answer for 'Design a visual landmark recognition system.'
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    +3

    "I understand this is more focused on ML. However, I have a system question. If users allow us to access their location, or they send location via text box, could we use CDNs for the search without hitting our database? We only query the database when we have zero information on location. Other questions: does embedding always guarantee information on location? Do we discharge the user images after we return a prediction? I heard the feedback that we should keep it for future learning. What would"

    Bini T. - "I understand this is more focused on ML. However, I have a system question. If users allow us to access their location, or they send location via text box, could we use CDNs for the search without hitting our database? We only query the database when we have zero information on location. Other questions: does embedding always guarantee information on location? Do we discharge the user images after we return a prediction? I heard the feedback that we should keep it for future learning. What would"See full answer

    Software Engineer
    System Design
    +1 more
  • Meta (Facebook) logoAsked at Meta (Facebook) 
    Video answer for 'Design an API for searching a folder.'
    Software Engineer
    System Design
    +1 more
Showing 1-13 of 13