I wanted a job with a more flexible schedule so I could be home more with my family and my young daughter. I prepped for just one month, using an online system design course, and came out with an offer from CrowdStrike. On paper it was a sideways move, Sr. SDE where I am now to Sr. SDE there, but the offer came in about 15% above my current pay.
Most of my prep time went into the system design course. I worked through its sample problems and paid attention to the AI feedback, which showed me which habits kept coming up as weak spots. CrowdStrike is a security company, so two things sit at the top of their list: security and availability. Make sure your design speaks to both, and think about the tradeoffs from the point of view of the people using the system. My take-home assignment was to design an event system from a set of requirements they gave me. The course teaches a solid way to structure any design, so lean on that, but you also have to be ready to talk through your choices afterwards. Once I turned the take-home in, I sat in a two-hour meeting with two other engineers who went through the whole design with me. The final design mattered less than how I explained my proposals and how I worked with them on their suggestions, questions and worries. Don't shut them down by insisting you are right. Be willing to give ground when they have a better option or when the requirements shift in a way you didn't expect.
They also have the engineers review sample code, which I actually liked, but it isn't something most interview prep covers, so leave time for it. Say out loud what you are thinking as you read through, what must be fixed, what could be better, and which style preferences you would leave a comment on. Be clear about how serious each piece of feedback is. After that came a question to build an in-memory cache like Redis, plus a small amount of design for a Redis-like system. The design part was short in my loop and was mostly there to check that I understood what caches are used for. The rest of that interview was just coding.
Besides the technical rounds, I talked with the manager, who asked the usual "tell me about what you do" questions. Be honest, especially on the questions about your mistakes. Don't avoid them. Just make sure you point out what you learned and what you now do to keep yourself and your team from repeating them.
Good luck, and keep going!
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