System Design Interview: Design a Stock Exchange / Trading System
5 min read What Is a Stock Exchange System? A stock exchange matching engine pairs buy and sell orders in real time, executing […] 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
System Design Interview: Design Google Docs / Collaborative Editing
5 min read What Is Collaborative Document Editing? Real-time collaborative editing allows multiple users to simultaneously edit the same document, with changes from Read article
System Design
System Design Interview: Design a Database Connection Pool
5 min read What Is a Database Connection Pool? Opening a database connection is expensive: TCP handshake, authentication, SSL negotiation, session setup — Read article
System Design
System Design Interview: Design a Content Delivery Network (CDN)
5 min read What Is a CDN? A Content Delivery Network is a globally distributed network of edge servers (Points of Presence, PoPs) Read article
System Design
System Design Interview: Design a Real-Time Bidding (RTB) System
5 min read What Is Real-Time Bidding? Real-Time Bidding (RTB) is the programmatic auction mechanism behind most digital display advertising. When a user Read article
System Design
System Design Interview: Microservices and Service Mesh (Envoy, Istio, mTLS)
4 min read What Is a Service Mesh? A service mesh is an infrastructure layer that handles service-to-service communication in a microservices architecture. Read article
System Design
System Design Interview: Design a Location-Based Services System (Yelp/Google Maps)
5 min read What Is a Location-Based Services System? A location-based services (LBS) system enables geospatial queries: find nearby restaurants, show points of Read article
System Design
System Design Interview: Design a Task Scheduling System (Cron/Airflow)
5 min read What Is a Task Scheduling System? A task scheduling system triggers jobs at specified times or on recurring schedules. Examples: Read article
System Design
System Design Interview: Design a Real-Time Chat Application (WhatsApp/Slack)
5 min read What Is a Real-Time Chat System? A real-time chat system enables persistent messaging between users with delivery guarantees and online Read article
System Design
System Design Interview: Design a Configuration Management System (etcd/Consul)
6 min read What Is a Configuration Management System? A configuration management system stores key-value configuration data that services read at startup or Read article
System Design
System Design Interview: Design a Fraud Detection System
5 min read What Is a Fraud Detection System? A fraud detection system identifies and blocks fraudulent transactions, account takeovers, and abuse in Read article
System Design
System Design Interview: Design a Search Engine (Query Processing and Ranking)
6 min read What Is a Search Engine? A search engine indexes a corpus of documents and retrieves the most relevant results for Read article
System Design
System Design Interview: Design a Digital Wallet and Payment System
5 min read What Is a Digital Wallet? A digital wallet stores funds and enables transfers between users and merchants. Examples: PayPal, Venmo, Read article
System Design
System Design Interview: Design a Video Streaming Platform (YouTube/Netflix)
5 min read What Is a Video Streaming Platform? A video streaming platform stores, processes, and delivers video content to millions of concurrent Read article
System Design
System Design Interview: Design an E-Commerce Order and Checkout System
5 min read What Is an E-Commerce Order System? An e-commerce order system manages the full lifecycle of an online purchase: cart management, Read article