System Design Interviews

Master FAANG-style system design with 15 comprehensive guides. Each design includes requirements, architecture, components, database schema, API design, and key trade-offs.

Infrastructure Easy

URL Shortener (TinyURL)

The URL Shortener (TinyURL-style) system design is a classic interview question that tests your understanding of distributed systems fundamentals. Companies like Google, Amazon, and Meta frequently as...

Infrastructure Easy

Rate Limiter

A Rate Limiter system design question tests your understanding of distributed systems, consistency, and real-time decision-making under load. Companies like Stripe, Uber, and Netflix ask this because ...

Storage Medium

Key-Value Store

Designing a distributed Key-Value Store (like Redis or DynamoDB) is a staple system design question at companies building large-scale systems. Amazon, Google, and Meta all operate massive KV stores, a...

Messaging Medium

Notification System

A Notification System design question evaluates your ability to design for high fan-out, multiple channels (push, email, SMS, in-app), and reliability at scale. Companies like Facebook, Twitter, and S...

Data Pipeline Medium

Web Crawler

Designing a Web Crawler (like Googlebot) tests your understanding of distributed crawling, politeness policies, URL deduplication, and handling the scale and unpredictability of the web. Search compan...

Search Medium

Search Autocomplete (Typeahead)

Search Autocomplete (Typeahead) is a popular system design question because it combines data structures (Trie), real-time ranking, and low-latency requirements. Companies like Google, Amazon, and Link...

Social Medium

News Feed System

The News Feed system design (like Facebook or Twitter) is a classic interview question that tests your understanding of fan-out, feed ranking, and real-time updates. The core challenge is serving a pe...

Real-time Hard

Chat/Messaging System (WhatsApp)

Designing a Chat/Messaging System (WhatsApp, Slack, or iMessage) is a challenging system design question that tests real-time delivery, offline support, and consistency. The core challenges include: d...

Storage Medium

Distributed Cache

Designing a Distributed Cache (like Memcached or Redis Cluster) tests your understanding of caching strategies, consistency, and fault tolerance at scale. Caches sit in front of nearly every high-traf...

Media Hard

Video Streaming (YouTube)

Designing a Video Streaming platform (YouTube, Netflix) is a complex system design question that tests CDN usage, adaptive bitrate streaming, and handling massive media files. The core challenges incl...

Real-time Hard

Ride Sharing (Uber)

Designing a Ride Sharing system (Uber, Lyft) is a challenging question that tests real-time matching, geolocation, and distributed state. The core challenges include: matching riders with nearby drive...

Social Hard

Social Media (Instagram)

Designing a Social Media platform (Instagram) combines photo/video storage, news feed, real-time features, and discovery. The question tests your ability to handle media uploads at scale, feed generat...

Storage Hard

File Storage (Dropbox)

Designing a File Storage system (Dropbox, Google Drive) tests your understanding of sync, conflict resolution, and efficient storage. The core challenges include: keeping files in sync across devices,...

Finance Hard

Payment System

Designing a Payment System tests your understanding of financial transactions, idempotency, and consistency. The core challenges include: processing payments reliably (no double charges, no lost payme...

Messaging Hard

Distributed Message Queue (Kafka)

Designing a Distributed Message Queue (Kafka, RabbitMQ) tests your understanding of pub/sub, partitioning, replication, and consumer groups. The core challenges include: ordering guarantees (per-parti...