System Design Interview Questions

Review this list of 336 system design interview questions and answers verified by hiring managers and candidates.
  • Meta (Facebook) logoAsked at Meta (Facebook) 
    Video answer for 'How would you build a Facebook product for blood donation?'
    +34

    "Clarifying questions: · Is there a specific scenario we are building before? Example: urgent need for a specific type of blood vs building up blood banks proactively. You decide · This would be for mobile/web and integrate into the existing facebook product? Yes Ok before we get started I wanted to discuss the facebook mission: to give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together. I can see how blood donation fits directly into this, enabling blood donation helps"

    Anonymous Hummingbird - "Clarifying questions: · Is there a specific scenario we are building before? Example: urgent need for a specific type of blood vs building up blood banks proactively. You decide · This would be for mobile/web and integrate into the existing facebook product? Yes Ok before we get started I wanted to discuss the facebook mission: to give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together. I can see how blood donation fits directly into this, enabling blood donation helps"See full answer

    Product Manager
    System Design
    +1 more
  • Amazon logoAsked at Amazon 
    +2

    "Step 1: Clarifying the Problem Scope Assumptions and basic system requirements: Cashless payments: The machine supports cashless payment methods like credit cards, mobile wallets, or NFC-based payments (e.g., Apple Pay, Google Pay). Multiple candy options: The machine offers different types of candy. Inventory management: The system tracks the stock of candy in real-time. User interface: A display screen for users to select the type of candy, make payments, an"

    Ramendra S. - "Step 1: Clarifying the Problem Scope Assumptions and basic system requirements: Cashless payments: The machine supports cashless payment methods like credit cards, mobile wallets, or NFC-based payments (e.g., Apple Pay, Google Pay). Multiple candy options: The machine offers different types of candy. Inventory management: The system tracks the stock of candy in real-time. User interface: A display screen for users to select the type of candy, make payments, an"See full answer

    Technical Program Manager
    System Design
  • Meta (Facebook) logoAsked at Meta (Facebook) 
    Technical Program Manager
    System Design
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  • Nvidia logoAsked at Nvidia 

    "I started off with developing microservices for the game and then incorporating kafka to make it scalable"

    Kiran M. - "I started off with developing microservices for the game and then incorporating kafka to make it scalable"See full answer

    Software Engineer
    System Design
  • Microsoft logoAsked at Microsoft 
    Product Manager
    System Design
    +2 more
  • Google logoAsked at Google 
    +56

    "Clarifying question: When you say users, what specific metric are we talking about?  Answer: we want to increase # of daily active users.  Assume active users are logged in users. Is there a region that we have in mind for this increase? Assume no, we want to think about globally Is there a specific device (mobile vs desktop) ? Assume no Approach: I want to first think about Youtube, its mission and current business at a high level. . Then I want to think about the current ecos"

    Yespm T. - "Clarifying question: When you say users, what specific metric are we talking about?  Answer: we want to increase # of daily active users.  Assume active users are logged in users. Is there a region that we have in mind for this increase? Assume no, we want to think about globally Is there a specific device (mobile vs desktop) ? Assume no Approach: I want to first think about Youtube, its mission and current business at a high level. . Then I want to think about the current ecos"See full answer

    System Design
    Product Strategy
  • Roblox logoAsked at Roblox 

    "Problem scope: Can this system detect Bot in real-time online or offline? Both. Online traffic: 1M DAU. Latency: 2s. Offline frequency: daily Offline data: 2B activity logs. Data: How do we know a Bot player (Label)? Human label. Imbalance data: reweight, resample. Develop a Bot simulator to generate more data offline for training. Given lower weight to simulator data than human label. Features: Signals from different models online. Log all the features for offline. Propose new features: dail"

    Jacky Y. - "Problem scope: Can this system detect Bot in real-time online or offline? Both. Online traffic: 1M DAU. Latency: 2s. Offline frequency: daily Offline data: 2B activity logs. Data: How do we know a Bot player (Label)? Human label. Imbalance data: reweight, resample. Develop a Bot simulator to generate more data offline for training. Given lower weight to simulator data than human label. Features: Signals from different models online. Log all the features for offline. Propose new features: dail"See full answer

    Machine Learning Engineer
    System Design
  • Google logoAsked at Google 
    +55

    "Approach Clarify the question Define deaf --> unable to hear, but can communicate via sign language, lip read and use all other senses Define fire alarm --> for residential use, it notifies occupants of smoke and potential fires and alerts fire department to check in and/or come over Define constraints --> budgetary constraint, design should be user-friendly and convenient Define goals --> get folks out of harm's way quickly and notify fire department to c"

    Bella R. - "Approach Clarify the question Define deaf --> unable to hear, but can communicate via sign language, lip read and use all other senses Define fire alarm --> for residential use, it notifies occupants of smoke and potential fires and alerts fire department to check in and/or come over Define constraints --> budgetary constraint, design should be user-friendly and convenient Define goals --> get folks out of harm's way quickly and notify fire department to c"See full answer

    Product Manager
    System Design
    +2 more
  • Amazon logoAsked at Amazon 

    "The interviewer was interested how the system design would be for files, directories, symbolic links. After proposing my idea, I was asked to print all files for a given path."

    B. T. - "The interviewer was interested how the system design would be for files, directories, symbolic links. After proposing my idea, I was asked to print all files for a given path."See full answer

    Software Engineer
    System Design
  • Stripe logoAsked at Stripe 
    Video answer for 'Design an application performance monitoring system.'
    Engineering Manager
    System Design
  • Amazon logoAsked at Amazon 
    +2

    "Step 1: Clarifying the Problem Scope We will focus on designing the leaderboard for Dream11 with these assumptions: Registered teams: 100,000 users are actively participating and ranked. Real-time updates: Leaderboard updates frequently as players accumulate points based on live sports events. Multiple leagues: Each user can participate in different leagues, so we will need to maintain a separate leaderboard for each league. Query efficiency: Users frequently"

    Ramendra S. - "Step 1: Clarifying the Problem Scope We will focus on designing the leaderboard for Dream11 with these assumptions: Registered teams: 100,000 users are actively participating and ranked. Real-time updates: Leaderboard updates frequently as players accumulate points based on live sports events. Multiple leagues: Each user can participate in different leagues, so we will need to maintain a separate leaderboard for each league. Query efficiency: Users frequently"See full answer

    Engineering Manager
    System Design
  • Amazon logoAsked at Amazon 
    +1

    " To clarify on what we are trying to solve for and get the definition of a distributed scheduler straight . So A Distributed Scheduler refers to a system that can handle job scheduling and execution in a scalable and fault-tolerant manner by distributing the workload across multiple servers or nodes. we will make some assumptions with the design , as follows: we will assume 10,000 QPS for job submissions and should be able query for jobs status . Job execution should have minimal latency"

    Scott S. - " To clarify on what we are trying to solve for and get the definition of a distributed scheduler straight . So A Distributed Scheduler refers to a system that can handle job scheduling and execution in a scalable and fault-tolerant manner by distributing the workload across multiple servers or nodes. we will make some assumptions with the design , as follows: we will assume 10,000 QPS for job submissions and should be able query for jobs status . Job execution should have minimal latency"See full answer

    Software Engineer
    System Design
    +1 more
  • Meta (Facebook) logoAsked at Meta (Facebook) 
    Video answer for 'Design TikTok.'
    +18

    "I watched a couple of videos like this, one of them by Exponent staff (I think). It was disappointing that the architecture diagram and the walkthrough was a general layered architecture that you can apply to any backend system. I was wondering if there are videos that can be considered a reference material to watch, learn and improve on the tech (sys design) skills, and not so much about the soft skills."

    BriskD - "I watched a couple of videos like this, one of them by Exponent staff (I think). It was disappointing that the architecture diagram and the walkthrough was a general layered architecture that you can apply to any backend system. I was wondering if there are videos that can be considered a reference material to watch, learn and improve on the tech (sys design) skills, and not so much about the soft skills."See full answer

    System Design
  • System Design
    Machine Learning
  • Amazon logoAsked at Amazon 
    +1

    "I tried solving this problem and here is the recorded video for the answer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1tOkeQjyI4 And here is the link to Excalidraw board - https://excalidraw.com/#json=uabNFHcZm5qNh8CInMvyh,Wn9Vf1ZhGdl_iBCQYFkYdw"

    Rjj - "I tried solving this problem and here is the recorded video for the answer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1tOkeQjyI4 And here is the link to Excalidraw board - https://excalidraw.com/#json=uabNFHcZm5qNh8CInMvyh,Wn9Vf1ZhGdl_iBCQYFkYdw"See full answer

    Engineering Manager
    System Design
    +1 more
  • +4

    "Functional Requirement Ingest Book Reviews in real time User in the website needs specify title tho search books, return response is the list of reviews on the books. Non Functional Requirement: User get real-time book reviews> It nees to handle the search among 1 million of active users daily"

    Simon O. - "Functional Requirement Ingest Book Reviews in real time User in the website needs specify title tho search books, return response is the list of reviews on the books. Non Functional Requirement: User get real-time book reviews> It nees to handle the search among 1 million of active users daily"See full answer

    Software Engineer
    System Design
    +1 more
  • Meta (Facebook) logoAsked at Meta (Facebook) 
    +2

    "C : Okay. So I would want to start with knowing what is the product for which we have to build a recommendation system. I : This is a photo sharing product. C : Okay. So is this something on the lines of Instagram? I : Yes C : Okay. And are we a new product co or we have some current product built already? I : You can assume yourself. C : Okay. Is there any demography or country we are targeting? I : No, this is a global product C : Okay. So, the biggest goal of any product recommendation system"

    Kartikeya N. - "C : Okay. So I would want to start with knowing what is the product for which we have to build a recommendation system. I : This is a photo sharing product. C : Okay. So is this something on the lines of Instagram? I : Yes C : Okay. And are we a new product co or we have some current product built already? I : You can assume yourself. C : Okay. Is there any demography or country we are targeting? I : No, this is a global product C : Okay. So, the biggest goal of any product recommendation system"See full answer

    Machine Learning Engineer
    System Design
    +1 more
  • Google logoAsked at Google 
    Machine Learning Engineer
    System Design
    +1 more
Showing 21-40 of 336