Design an employee directory with reporting queries

Q: Design an employee directory with reporting queries

This question evaluates system design competence with emphasis on hierarchical data modeling, concurrent data consistency, API and schema design, and efficient reporting-line queries within an employee management system.

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Question

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Scenario

Design an internal employee management system.

Functional requirements

CRUD for employees:
- Create/update employee profile (name, title, department, manager)
- Deactivate/terminate employees
Support org-structure queries:
- Get an employee’s manager
- Get an employee’s direct reports
- Get an employee’s full reporting chain (up to CEO)
- Get an employee’s full subtree (all indirect reports)

Non-functional requirements / discussion points

High concurrency (many reads/writes), correctness under concurrent updates.
Locking and consistency (avoid cycles, avoid lost updates).
API design (endpoints, payloads, versioning).
Data storage choices and schema design.

Explain your design and trade-offs, including how you would implement efficient reporting-line queries.

Design an employee directory with reporting queries

Quick Overview

Scenario

Functional requirements

Non-functional requirements / discussion points

Solution

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