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System Design Interview Questions

Review this list of 427 System Design interview questions and answers verified by hiring managers and candidates.
  • Meta logoAsked at Meta 
    8 answers
    Video answer for 'Design the system architecture for WhatsApp.'
    +5

    "Excellent job Roshan, really liked the explanation. Which software were you using to explain the system design diagrams?"

    Krishnan S. - "Excellent job Roshan, really liked the explanation. Which software were you using to explain the system design diagrams?"See full answer

    System Design
    Technical
  • LinkedIn logoAsked at LinkedIn 
    Add answer
    Software Engineer
    System Design
  • Accenture logoAsked at Accenture 
    2 answers
    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

    Software Engineer
    System Design
    +2 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
  • xAI logoAsked at xAI 
    1 answer

    "Which location you were interviewed? Can you please share some details?"

    K S. - "Which location you were interviewed? Can you please share some details?"See full answer

    Software Engineer
    System Design
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  • Google logoAsked at Google 
    1 answer

    "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
  • Meta logoAsked at Meta 
    4 answers
    +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
  • Google logoAsked at Google 
    2 answers

    "I will start with discussing the Google mission statement, which is to organize the world's information and make it easily accessible to everyone to help them get things done, and make their day a bit easier. I will think about building something that will leapfrog this mission. Google has already organized all of the world's public digital information in the current state. There are opportunities to get more information into a digital form. But there are also significant improvements in mak"

    Praveen - "I will start with discussing the Google mission statement, which is to organize the world's information and make it easily accessible to everyone to help them get things done, and make their day a bit easier. I will think about building something that will leapfrog this mission. Google has already organized all of the world's public digital information in the current state. There are opportunities to get more information into a digital form. But there are also significant improvements in mak"See full answer

    Product Manager
    System Design
    +1 more
  • Meta logoAsked at Meta 
    1 answer
    Video answer for 'Design a fake news detection system.'

    " Functional Requirements Content Ingestion\: Ingest news articles from various sources (websites, social media, etc.). Handle different types of content (text, images, videos). Content Analysis\: Extract and preprocess text from articles. Analyze the content for potential indicators of fake news. Model Training and Prediction\: Use machine learning models to classify content as fake or real. Continuously improve models with new data and f"

    Scott S. - " Functional Requirements Content Ingestion\: Ingest news articles from various sources (websites, social media, etc.). Handle different types of content (text, images, videos). Content Analysis\: Extract and preprocess text from articles. Analyze the content for potential indicators of fake news. Model Training and Prediction\: Use machine learning models to classify content as fake or real. Continuously improve models with new data and f"See full answer

    Technical Program Manager
    System Design
    +3 more
  • Atlassian logoAsked at Atlassian 
    1 answer

    "The interviewer hinted that a two-tower recommender system might be a suitable approach, using user history to embed users and pages separately and train on view or interaction data. Instead, I proposed a different approach that I felt was more aligned with how knowledge is structured in Confluence: I designed a system using a graph database to model the relationships between Confluence pages. Each page is a node, and edges represent content-based references. For example, when one article"

    Clayton P. - "The interviewer hinted that a two-tower recommender system might be a suitable approach, using user history to embed users and pages separately and train on view or interaction data. Instead, I proposed a different approach that I felt was more aligned with how knowledge is structured in Confluence: I designed a system using a graph database to model the relationships between Confluence pages. Each page is a node, and edges represent content-based references. For example, when one article"See full answer

    Machine Learning Engineer
    System Design
    +2 more
  • Dropbox logoAsked at Dropbox 
    10 answers
    Video answer for 'Design Dropbox.'
    +7

    "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
    +1 more
  • Google logoAsked at Google 
    3 answers

    "Any more details about this can make it easy"

    Srinivasa R. - "Any more details about this can make it easy"See full answer

    System Design
    Product Design
  • 3 answers
    Video answer for 'Design a Hotel Booking Service'

    "Inventory Service and Registration service can they be in SYNC always ?? The "experience layer" needs accessed by Hotel owners also ??? How does real time inventory come from all Hotels ???"

    Anup S. - "Inventory Service and Registration service can they be in SYNC always ?? The "experience layer" needs accessed by Hotel owners also ??? How does real time inventory come from all Hotels ???"See full answer

    System Design
  • Amazon logoAsked at Amazon 
    11 answers
    Video answer for 'Design Uber Eats.'
    +8

    "basic drew the diagram"

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

    Software Engineer
    System Design
    +2 more
  • Amazon logoAsked at Amazon 
    10 answers
    Video answer for 'Design Amazon's Kindle payment system.'
    +6

    "Payment system requirement assumption: Need to be ACID Amount limitation - some validation for max input size can be done at client level/ API level. Need to store historic info - GDPR The information to be stored for database assumed can be structured so RDBMS like mysql or Postgres Notification requirement - if fail or success need to be text or email to user and or caller Scalable - Assumption that it deals with critical transaction so Availability and Scalability requirement i"

    Personal W. - "Payment system requirement assumption: Need to be ACID Amount limitation - some validation for max input size can be done at client level/ API level. Need to store historic info - GDPR The information to be stored for database assumed can be structured so RDBMS like mysql or Postgres Notification requirement - if fail or success need to be text or email to user and or caller Scalable - Assumption that it deals with critical transaction so Availability and Scalability requirement i"See full answer

    System Design
    Product Design
  • Wealthfront logoAsked at Wealthfront 
    30 answers
    Video answer for 'Design YouTube.'
    +26

    "What software is being used to draw the design?"

    Farhan I. - "What software is being used to draw the design?"See full answer

    System Design
    Product Design
  • Better.com logoAsked at Better.com 
    2 answers
    Video answer for 'How would you design a relational schema for a calendar application?'

    "Here are the key entities to design a relational schema for a calendar application: User - userid, email, firstname, lastname Calendar - calendarID, calendarName, caledanUserID, defaultUIView, created, updated, status Event - eventID, eventName, eventUserID, isRecurrence, startDateTime, endDatetime EventReminder - eventID, reminderMethod(email, notification), reminderTime, reminderTimeUnit(min, hr, day) Event guest - eventID, userID, isRequired, acceptStatus"

    Chris C. - "Here are the key entities to design a relational schema for a calendar application: User - userid, email, firstname, lastname Calendar - calendarID, calendarName, caledanUserID, defaultUIView, created, updated, status Event - eventID, eventName, eventUserID, isRecurrence, startDateTime, endDatetime EventReminder - eventID, reminderMethod(email, notification), reminderTime, reminderTimeUnit(min, hr, day) Event guest - eventID, userID, isRequired, acceptStatus"See full answer

    System Design
    Technical
  • PwC logoAsked at PwC 
    Add answer
    Video answer for 'Deploy and Monitor an Instagram Ranking Model.'
    Finance and Strategy
    System Design
Showing 101-120 of 427
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