Engineering Manager System Design Interview Questions

Review this list of 52 system design engineering manager interview questions and answers verified by hiring managers and candidates.
  • Stripe logoAsked at Stripe 
    Engineering Manager
    System Design
  • Snowflake logoAsked at Snowflake 

    "Wrote up a simple cache system using python dict. Added TTL requirement. Then went into code-level concurrency issues for the cache."

    S R. - "Wrote up a simple cache system using python dict. Added TTL requirement. Then went into code-level concurrency issues for the cache."See full answer

    Engineering Manager
    System Design
  • Anthropic logoAsked at Anthropic 
    Video answer for 'Design a web crawler.'
    +7

    "Really good advice Abhishek K"

    Ds S. - "Really good advice Abhishek K"See full answer

    Engineering Manager
    System Design
    +1 more
  • Meta (Facebook) logoAsked at Meta (Facebook) 
    +1

    "System Components Data Collection Layer Posts with hashtags are asynchronously sent to Kafka topics Each message contains: hashtag, timestamp, userid, postid Multiple Kafka partitions ensure scalability and fault tolerance Processing Layer Apache Flink processes streams in real-time Implements sliding window aggregation (1hr, 24hr, 7d windows) Calculates topic popularity using weighted metrics: Post count User engagement (likes, comments) Unique user"

    Usman B. - "System Components Data Collection Layer Posts with hashtags are asynchronously sent to Kafka topics Each message contains: hashtag, timestamp, userid, postid Multiple Kafka partitions ensure scalability and fault tolerance Processing Layer Apache Flink processes streams in real-time Implements sliding window aggregation (1hr, 24hr, 7d windows) Calculates topic popularity using weighted metrics: Post count User engagement (likes, comments) Unique user"See full answer

    Engineering Manager
    System Design
  • "The question is bit vague (I guess deliberately) so I believe firstly we shall ask questions and resolve ambiguity. Some initial questions could be : 1) Is this one time activity or something that should be done on continuous basis. If continuous basis then at what frequency. 2) How much staleness is acceptable in SYSTEM Y data 3) Are there any limitation in SYSTEM Y and is it fair to assume that we would need some kind of transformation to bring data into SYSTEM Y schema. 4) What kind of vol"

    Kshitij A. - "The question is bit vague (I guess deliberately) so I believe firstly we shall ask questions and resolve ambiguity. Some initial questions could be : 1) Is this one time activity or something that should be done on continuous basis. If continuous basis then at what frequency. 2) How much staleness is acceptable in SYSTEM Y data 3) Are there any limitation in SYSTEM Y and is it fair to assume that we would need some kind of transformation to bring data into SYSTEM Y schema. 4) What kind of vol"See full answer

    Engineering Manager
    System Design
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  • Databricks logoAsked at Databricks 
    Engineering Manager
    System Design
    +1 more
  • "Scoped out problem constraints - how much data to download, how many computers, and how much time, how you can be detected (decentralized load). Designed a web crawler."

    Faraz A. - "Scoped out problem constraints - how much data to download, how many computers, and how much time, how you can be detected (decentralized load). Designed a web crawler."See full answer

    Engineering Manager
    System Design
    +1 more
  • Adobe logoAsked at Adobe 
    Video answer for 'Design a typeahead box for a search engine.'
    +5

    "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

    Engineering Manager
    System Design
    +1 more
  • "Load Balancer, Multiple API Servers, game Service, pub-sub system, HTTP Long Polling for status updates, write-through cache. No SQL DB to store user, game, and move information."

    gdecuri - "Load Balancer, Multiple API Servers, game Service, pub-sub system, HTTP Long Polling for status updates, write-through cache. No SQL DB to store user, game, and move information."See full answer

    Engineering Manager
    System Design
  • Meta (Facebook) logoAsked at Meta (Facebook) 
    Engineering Manager
    System Design
  • Meta (Facebook) logoAsked at Meta (Facebook) 

    "I tried solving this question and here is the recorded video for the entire solution - https://youtu.be/G_LIbTp58XA Feel free to comment here or on the video for further discussion."

    Rjj - "I tried solving this question and here is the recorded video for the entire solution - https://youtu.be/G_LIbTp58XA Feel free to comment here or on the video for further discussion."See full answer

    Engineering Manager
    System Design
    +1 more
  • Dropbox logoAsked at Dropbox 
    Video answer for 'Design Dropbox.'
    +4

    "Why skip defining the data model? Or did I just miss it?"

    Kurt K. - "Why skip defining the data model? Or did I just miss it?"See full answer

    Engineering Manager
    System Design
  • Anthropic logoAsked at Anthropic 
    Video answer for 'Design a key-value store.'

    "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

    Engineering Manager
    System Design
    +2 more
  • Meta (Facebook) logoAsked at Meta (Facebook) 

    "Functional Requirement Upload the file of any type POST v1/drive Upload the another version of file. POST v1/drive/{fileId} Delete the file. DELETE v1/drive/{fileId} Share the file. POST v1/drive/{fileId} Control the access level of the file. Provide the file accessibility following the directory structure. Non Functional Requirement Reliability: The file along with its versions uploaded should be"

    Vikash A. - "Functional Requirement Upload the file of any type POST v1/drive Upload the another version of file. POST v1/drive/{fileId} Delete the file. DELETE v1/drive/{fileId} Share the file. POST v1/drive/{fileId} Control the access level of the file. Provide the file accessibility following the directory structure. Non Functional Requirement Reliability: The file along with its versions uploaded should be"See full answer

    Engineering Manager
    System Design
    +1 more
  • Meta (Facebook) logoAsked at Meta (Facebook) 
    Video answer for 'Design a streaming service like Netflix.'

    "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

    Engineering Manager
    System Design
    +3 more
  • Amazon logoAsked at Amazon 
    Video answer for 'Design a URL shortener.'
    +19

    "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

    Engineering Manager
    System Design
    +1 more
  • Meta (Facebook) logoAsked at Meta (Facebook) 
    Video answer for 'Design a vending machine.'
    Engineering Manager
    System Design
    +1 more
  • Meta (Facebook) logoAsked at Meta (Facebook) 

    "I tried solving this question and here is the recorded video for the entire solution - https://youtu.be/G_LIbTp58XA Feel free to comment here or on the video for further discussion."

    Rjj - "I tried solving this question and here is the recorded video for the entire solution - https://youtu.be/G_LIbTp58XA Feel free to comment here or on the video for further discussion."See full answer

    Engineering Manager
    System Design
    +2 more
  • " can we use blomfilters to check existing usernames? and if both are creating at a time, like both are choosing some abcd , here system checks whether user with that name exists or not. so while checking , it will add an entry on redis (example) with this name as key and obtain lock using some distributed lock. , it will lock on that name. (like seat booking in bookmyshow) with some TTL value. so this check will happen once user enters his interest username and also while submit .. 2 times che"

    Gk K. - " can we use blomfilters to check existing usernames? and if both are creating at a time, like both are choosing some abcd , here system checks whether user with that name exists or not. so while checking , it will add an entry on redis (example) with this name as key and obtain lock using some distributed lock. , it will lock on that name. (like seat booking in bookmyshow) with some TTL value. so this check will happen once user enters his interest username and also while submit .. 2 times che"See full answer

    Engineering Manager
    System Design
    +2 more
  • Engineering Manager
    System Design
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