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System Design

Scaling, caching, load balancing, CAP, messaging.

21 questions
ScalingCachingLoad BalancingCAP TheoremMessage QueuesDatabases

Sample Questions (21 live)

ScalingHard

How would you design a URL shortener like bit.ly?

AmazonDeloitteRead →
ScalingEasy

Horizontal vs vertical scaling — which do you reach for and why?

AmazonInfosysTCSRead →
Load BalancingEasy

How does a load balancer distribute traffic, and what algorithms are common?

AmazonInfosysCognizantRead →
CachingEasy

Where do you add caching, and what are the common caching patterns?

AmazonMicrosoftDeloitteRead →
CAP TheoremEasy

Explain the CAP theorem and how it guides real design decisions.

AmazonGoogleMicrosoftRead →
DatabasesMedium

How does database sharding work, and what makes a good shard key?

AmazonGoogleMicrosoftRead →
ScalingMedium

What problem does consistent hashing solve, and how does it work?

AmazonGoogleMicrosoftRead →
DatabasesMedium

How do you scale a read-heavy vs a write-heavy database workload?

AmazonMicrosoftDeloitteRead →
Message QueuesMedium

When do you introduce a message queue, and what does it buy you?

AmazonMicrosoftDeloitteRead →
ScalingMedium

How would you design a distributed rate limiter?

AmazonGoogleMicrosoftRead →
Message QueuesMedium

How would you design a notification system (email / SMS / push) at scale?

AmazonMicrosoftDeloitteRead →
CachingMedium

How does a CDN speed up a global application, and what belongs on it?

AmazonGoogleMicrosoftRead →
DatabasesMedium

Strong vs eventual consistency, and how do quorums (R+W>N) tune it?

AmazonGoogleMicrosoftRead →
ScalingMedium

How would you design a social news feed (timeline)?

AmazonGoogleMicrosoftRead →
DatabasesMedium

How would you design a search system (e.g. product or document search)?

AmazonGoogleMicrosoftRead →
CachingHard

How would you design a distributed cache like Redis Cluster?

AmazonGoogleMicrosoftRead →
Message QueuesHard

How would you design a real-time chat/messaging system?

AmazonGoogleMicrosoftRead →
ScalingHard

How do you do back-of-the-envelope capacity estimation in a design interview?

AmazonGoogleMicrosoftRead →
ScalingHard

What is the hot-key (celebrity) problem, and how do you solve it?

AmazonGoogleMicrosoftRead →
DatabasesHard

What is a Bloom filter, and where does it save huge amounts of work?

AmazonGoogleMicrosoftRead →
DatabasesHard

How would you design a payment/ledger system for correctness under failure?

AmazonMicrosoftbankingRead →

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