Design a large-scale distributed rate limiter

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Quick Overview

This question evaluates system design competency in distributed systems, focusing on scalability, multi-tenant isolation, rate-limiting algorithms, consistency and failover trade-offs, and operational concerns such as observability and safe degradation.

Design a large-scale distributed rate limiter

Company: Google

Role: Software Engineer

Category: System Design

Difficulty: medium

Interview Round: Onsite

Overview: This question evaluates system design competency in distributed systems, focusing on scalability, multi-tenant isolation, rate-limiting algorithms, consistency and failover trade-offs, and operational concerns such as observability and safe degradation.

Read the full Google Software Engineer interview experience this question came from

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Google
Jan 12, 2026
mediumSoftware EngineerOnsiteSystem Design
21
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