Design a video streaming platform like Netflix/YouTube

Q: Design a video streaming platform like Netflix/YouTube

This question evaluates a candidate's competence in designing large-scale video streaming systems, covering distributed systems architecture, scalability, storage and data modeling, API design, content processing, content delivery and playback performance.

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Question

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System Design

Design a large-scale video streaming platform similar to Netflix/YouTube.

Core user stories

Upload (creator) / ingest (studio) videos.
Browse/search a catalog.
Start playback quickly and stream smoothly (adaptive bitrate).
Resume playback across devices.
(Optional) Recommendations and personalized home feed.

Requirements

Functional

Video upload/ingestion and processing (transcode, thumbnails, captions).
Video metadata (title, description, tags, privacy/availability).
Playback via multiple bitrates and device formats.
Basic analytics (views, watch time).

Non-functional

Low startup latency, minimal buffering.
Highly available playback.
Global delivery.
Secure content access (signed URLs/DRM optional).

Scale assumptions (you may choose reasonable numbers)

Millions of daily active users.
Large video library (PB-scale storage).
Global traffic spikes.

Explain your architecture, APIs, data storage choices, caching/CDN strategy, and how you handle scaling and reliability.