Design a URL shortener
Company: J.P. Morgan
Role: Software Engineer
Category: System Design
Difficulty: medium
Interview Round: Technical Screen
Design a URL shortening service.
The system should support:
- creating a short code for a long URL
- redirecting users from the short code to the original URL
- handling high read traffic efficiently
The interviewer focused mainly on the overall architecture rather than deep implementation details.
**Bonus challenge:** extend the design so that every click on a short URL is tracked for analytics.
Quick Answer: This question evaluates a candidate's ability to design scalable web services and systems architecture, covering data modeling, routing, and high-read performance for URL mapping and redirection.