Question 1

Design a URL shortener like bit.ly. Walk through the full architecture handling 100M URLs and 10B reads/month.

Accepted Answer

This is a hard-difficulty System Design interview question commonly asked at senior software engineering interviews. Study this question and practice answering it with an AI mock interview on Zavnia.

Question 2

Explain the CAP theorem. Give real-world examples of systems that chose CP, AP, and CA tradeoffs.

Accepted Answer

This is a medium-difficulty System Design interview question commonly asked at senior software engineering interviews. Study this question and practice answering it with an AI mock interview on Zavnia.

Question 3

Design a distributed cache layer. How do you handle cache invalidation, eviction, and hot-key problems?

Accepted Answer

This is a hard-difficulty System Design interview question commonly asked at senior software engineering interviews. Study this question and practice answering it with an AI mock interview on Zavnia.

Question 4

Design a notification system that delivers push, email, and SMS to 50M users. How do you guarantee delivery without duplicates?

Accepted Answer

This is a hard-difficulty System Design interview question commonly asked at senior software engineering interviews. Study this question and practice answering it with an AI mock interview on Zavnia.

Question 5

How would you design a rate limiter for a public API? Explain at least two algorithms and their tradeoffs.

Accepted Answer

This is a medium-difficulty System Design interview question commonly asked at senior software engineering interviews. Study this question and practice answering it with an AI mock interview on Zavnia.

Question 6

Explain eventual consistency vs strong consistency. How does this choice affect the architecture of a banking system?

Accepted Answer

This is a medium-difficulty System Design interview question commonly asked at senior software engineering interviews. Study this question and practice answering it with an AI mock interview on Zavnia.

Question 7

When would you choose SQL over NoSQL? Walk through a scenario where switching from one to the other was the right call.

Accepted Answer

This is a medium-difficulty System Design interview question commonly asked at senior software engineering interviews. Study this question and practice answering it with an AI mock interview on Zavnia.

Question 8

Design a system for real-time collaborative document editing like Google Docs. How do you handle concurrent edits and conflict resolution?

Accepted Answer

This is a hard-difficulty System Design interview question commonly asked at senior software engineering interviews. Study this question and practice answering it with an AI mock interview on Zavnia.

System Design Interview Questions

Interview Questions

Design a URL shortener like bit.ly. Walk through the full architecture handling 100M URLs and 10B reads/month.

Explain the CAP theorem. Give real-world examples of systems that chose CP, AP, and CA tradeoffs.

Design a distributed cache layer. How do you handle cache invalidation, eviction, and hot-key problems?

Design a notification system that delivers push, email, and SMS to 50M users. How do you guarantee delivery without duplicates?

How would you design a rate limiter for a public API? Explain at least two algorithms and their tradeoffs.

Explain eventual consistency vs strong consistency. How does this choice affect the architecture of a banking system?

When would you choose SQL over NoSQL? Walk through a scenario where switching from one to the other was the right call.

Design a system for real-time collaborative document editing like Google Docs. How do you handle concurrent edits and conflict resolution?