Design a scalable network I/O service

Quick Overview

This question evaluates a candidate's ability to design a scalable, highly available network I/O backend, testing competencies in distributed systems, storage architecture, CDN and caching integration, API and data model design, capacity planning, failure handling, observability, and security.

Design a scalable network I/O service

Company: Anthropic

Role: Software Engineer

Category: System Design

Difficulty: hard

Interview Round: Technical Screen

Design a scalable and reliable backend service that handles high-volume network I/O (e.g., ingesting and serving large files or streaming data) for millions of users. Define functional and non-functional requirements; propose APIs and data models; estimate capacity and perform back-of-the-envelope calculations; design the high-level architecture (load balancing, stateless services, storage, caching, queues, CDN). Explain strategies for horizontal scaling, performance optimization, and cost controls. Address security and privacy (authentication, authorization, encryption in transit/at rest, rate limiting, multi-tenant isolation). Detail failure handling, retries, idempotency, consistency choices, and disaster recovery. Describe deployment, observability (logging/metrics/tracing), incident response, and rollback. Identify corner cases (e.g., partial uploads, duplicate requests, slow clients, network partitions) and how you would test them.

Overview: This question evaluates a candidate's ability to design a scalable, highly available network I/O backend, testing competencies in distributed systems, storage architecture, CDN and caching integration, API and data model design, capacity planning, failure handling, observability, and security.

Anthropic logo
Anthropic
Sep 6, 2025
hardSoftware EngineerTechnical ScreenSystem Design
40
0

System Design: High-Volume Network I/O Backend (Files and Streaming)

Context

Design a backend service that supports millions of users uploading and downloading large files (hundreds of MB to multi-GB) and/or consuming streaming data. The service must be Internet-facing, production-grade, and cost-efficient.

Assume this is a 45–60 minute technical screen. You may make reasonable assumptions; state them explicitly.

Requirements

  1. Functional requirements
    • Upload large files with resumable/multipart support, pause/resume, checksums, and content-type validation.
    • Download files efficiently with range requests, partial reads, and CDN acceleration.
    • Optional: Support a streaming mode (e.g., live video/audio segments) using standard protocols.
    • Metadata management: create/list/get object metadata; versioning; soft delete; lifecycle policies.
    • Access control: per-tenant, per-user permissions; audit logging.
  2. Non-functional requirements
    • High availability across zones; durability appropriate for long-term storage.
    • Horizontal scalability to millions of users; low tail latency for control-plane APIs.
    • Cost-aware architecture (storage, egress, CDN, compute).
    • Security and privacy by default.
  3. Deliverables
    • Clearly state assumptions and SLOs.
    • Define functional and non-functional requirements.
    • Propose external APIs (endpoints, request/response) and core data models.
    • Capacity estimates and back-of-the-envelope calculations.
    • High-level architecture: load balancing, stateless services, storage, caching, queues, CDN.
    • Strategies for horizontal scaling, performance optimizations, and cost controls.
    • Security and privacy: authentication, authorization, encryption in transit/at rest, rate limiting, multi-tenant isolation.
    • Failure handling: retries, idempotency, consistency choices, disaster recovery.
    • Deployment, observability (logging/metrics/tracing), incident response, rollback.
    • Corner cases (e.g., partial uploads, duplicate requests, slow clients, network partitions) and how to test them.