Design an LLM Inference API
6 min read Design an LLM inference API — the service that accepts user prompts and returns model completions, like the OpenAI API, […] Read article
System Design
← Tech Interview
System Design
Learn to design scalable, reliable systems that handle millions of users. System design interviews test your ability to architect real-world applications, considering tradeoffs, scalability, and best practices.
Core Topics:
Scalability: Load balancing, horizontal vs vertical scaling
Storage: Databases (SQL vs NoSQL), caching (Redis, Memcached)
Reliability: Replication, failover, disaster recovery
Performance: CDNs, caching strategies, database indexing
Common Design Questions:
Design URL shortener (bit.ly)
Design rate limiter
Design Twitter/Instagram feed
Design messaging system (WhatsApp)
Design file storage (Dropbox)
Interview Level: Senior engineers (L5+) at FAANG companies. Requires 3-5+ years experience to tackle effectively.
Preparation: Study system design patterns, understand distributed systems fundamentals, and practice mock interviews.
System Design
Design a Monitoring and Alerting System
6 min read Design a monitoring and alerting system like Datadog, Prometheus + Grafana, or New Relic. This is a system design problem Read article
System Design
Design an Ad Click Aggregation System
5 min read Design an ad click aggregation system — the infrastructure that counts how many times each ad was clicked, detects fraud, Read article
System Design
Design a Stock Trading Platform
5 min read Design a stock trading platform like NYSE, Nasdaq, or a brokerage like Robinhood. This problem is notable for its extreme Read article
System Design
Design a CDN (Content Delivery Network)
6 min read Design a Content Delivery Network like Cloudflare, Akamai, or AWS CloudFront. A CDN is infrastructure that most large-scale systems depend Read article
System Design
Design a Distributed ID Generator (Snowflake)
4 min read Design a distributed ID generation service. Every large-scale system needs unique IDs — for database rows, events, messages, and transactions. Read article
System Design
Design Google Maps / Navigation System
6 min read Design a navigation system like Google Maps. This problem combines geospatial data at scale, graph algorithms, real-time data ingestion, and Read article
System Design
Design a Hotel / Airbnb Reservation System
5 min read Design a hotel or vacation rental reservation system like Booking.com or Airbnb. The core challenge isn’t the search UI — Read article
System Design
Design a Proximity Service (Yelp / Nearby Search)
5 min read Design a proximity service like Yelp’s “restaurants near me” or Google Maps’ nearby search. The core challenge is geospatial indexing Read article
System Design
Design a Payment System
5 min read Design a payment system like Stripe, PayPal, or an internal payments platform at a company like Uber or Amazon. This Read article
System Design
Design a Distributed Key-Value Store
5 min read Design a distributed key-value store like DynamoDB, Cassandra (its KV layer), or Redis Cluster. This is one of the most Read article
System Design
Design a News Feed (Facebook-style)
4 min read Design a news feed system like Facebook’s. This is a richer problem than the Twitter feed design — Facebook’s feed Read article
System Design
Design a Web Crawler
5 min read Design a web crawler that can index a significant portion of the internet. This question tests whether you understand distributed Read article
System Design
Design Dropbox / Google Drive
5 min read Design a file storage and sync service like Dropbox or Google Drive. This problem tests your ability to handle large Read article
System Design
System Design: Search Autocomplete (Google Typeahead)
6 min read Search autocomplete — the suggestions that appear as you type into Google, Amazon, or YouTube — is a deceptively interesting Read article