Software Engineer System Design Interview Questions

Practice 1,082 real System Design interview questions for Software Engineer roles. From companies including Meta, OpenAI, Amazon, Anthropic, Google.

1.1k Questions 223 Companies08.16.2026
Showing 20 results
Role
Coupang logo
Coupang
Medium
Software Engineer

Design large video upload for a YouTube-like app

System Design Prompt Design the video upload subsystem for a YouTube-like product that supports large video files. Core user flow 1. User selects a la...

System Design
5
0
98 people solved
Dec 13, 2025
Bytedance logo
Bytedance
Hard
Software Engineer

Design a Synchronized Live Comment Overlay

Design a Synchronized Live Comment Overlay Design a chat-like comment service whose messages appear as a live overlay synchronized to a video or event...

System Design
1
0
11 people solved
Apr 28, 2026
Coinbase logo
Coinbase
Hard
Software Engineer Locked

Design real-time crypto prices homepage

This question evaluates system design competency for real-time, low-latency data pipelines and client fanout for a crypto prices homepage, testing ski...

System Design
12
0
196 people solved
Jan 22, 2026
Reddit logo
Reddit
Easy
Software Engineer Locked

Design a game leaderboard service

This question evaluates a candidate's ability to design scalable, low-latency backend systems and distributed data architectures, covering competencie...

System Design
14
0
171 people solved
Jan 22, 2026
Roblox logo
Roblox
Medium
Software Engineer Locked

Design a rate limiter

This question evaluates a candidate's competency in designing distributed rate limiting systems, covering rate-limiting algorithms, scalability and fa...

System Design
31
0
390 people solved
Jan 22, 2026
Basis Ai logo
Basis Ai
Medium
Software Engineer

Design a Layover Activity Recommendation App

You are designing a mobile app for travelers who have free time during an airport layover. The app should recommend useful activities the traveler can...

System Design
19
0
149 people solved
Apr 27, 2026
Robinhood logo
Robinhood
Medium
Software Engineer Locked

Design a job scheduler with SLA and logs

This question evaluates understanding of distributed job scheduling, SLA enforcement, observability, and fault-tolerant execution across worker fleets...

System Design
22
0
149 people solved
Feb 11, 2026
Walmart Labs logo
Walmart Labs
Easy
Software EngineerSenior+ Locked

Design aggregator for multiple downstream services

This question evaluates system-design and distributed-systems skills, focusing on microservice aggregation, fan-out/fan-in concurrency, fault toleranc...

System Design
8
0
64 people solved
Dec 9, 2025
Coinbase logo
Coinbase
Medium
Software Engineer

Design a blob storage system for lunar environment

You are asked to design a blob storage system deployed on a lunar base. The interviewer is intentionally making the environment unusual (the Moon) to ...

System Design
13
0
174 people solved
Dec 8, 2025
NVIDIA logo
NVIDIA
Medium
Software Engineer Locked

Design a bidirectional data sync dashboard

This question evaluates distributed system design skills focused on reliable bidirectional data synchronization, conflict resolution, event ingestion,...

System Design
13
0
112 people solved
Feb 9, 2026
Airbnb logo
Airbnb
Hard
Software Engineer

Design API for split-stay combinations

Question Design an HTTP API endpoint that, given a requested date range and a collection of Airbnb listings with their availability, returns all valid...

System Design
62
0
428 people solved
Sep 6, 2025
DoorDash logo
DoorDash
Hard
Software Engineer

Build an API aggregator with concurrency and retries

Build an API aggregator with concurrency and retries Build an Aggregation Service with Parallel Calls, Timeouts, Retries, and Observability Context Yo...

System Design
19
0
140 people solved
Jul 15, 2025
Microsoft logo
Microsoft
Medium
Software Engineer

Design A Low-Latency Product Price Update API

Design an API and serving system for product prices. Each product price is updated at most once every 24 hours, but the product launch page needs low-...

System Design
2
0
26 people solved
Apr 24, 2026
Roblox logo
Roblox
Medium
Software Engineer

Design in-game payment wallet system

Design in-game payment wallet system System Design: In‑Game Currency Transfers and Analytics Context You are designing the in‑game currency subsystem ...

System Design
38
0
164 people solved
Jul 29, 2025
Illumio logo
Illumio
Medium
Software Engineer Locked

Design Multicloud Publishing and API Gateway

This question evaluates understanding of distributed systems and cloud architecture, covering reliable database-to-multicloud event publishing (messag...

System Design
4
0
27 people solved
May 24, 2026
OpenAI logo
OpenAI
Hard
Software Engineer Locked

Design Online Chess Matchmaking

This question evaluates a candidate's ability to design scalable, low-latency matchmaking backend systems, covering distributed service decomposition,...

System Design
25
0
361 people solved
May 24, 2026
Amazon logo
Amazon
Hard
Software Engineer

Design a file search module like UNIX find

Design Task: Object-Oriented module that mimics UNIX find Context Design an object-oriented library that replicates the core functionality of the UNIX...

System Design
33
0
233 people solved
Aug 13, 2025
TikTok logo
TikTok
Hard
Software Engineer

Design and explain your project architecture

Question Pick one of your recent projects and walk an interviewer through its architecture end-to-end. Sketch a high-level diagram, then go deep on th...

System Design
7
0
114 people solved
Aug 13, 2025
Crowdstrike logo
Crowdstrike
Medium
Software Engineer

Design scalable worker pool for template jobs

You have implemented a function that takes a template string (or many template strings) and replaces placeholders like {{db_host}} and {{db_port}} usi...

System Design
9
0
151 people solved
Oct 5, 2025
OpenAI logo
OpenAI
Medium
Software EngineerSenior+ Locked

Design a Real-Time Online Chess Platform

Design the backend for a globally distributed real-time chess platform supporting moves, spectators, clocks, reconnects, and failover. Define authorit...

System Design
1
0
16 people solved
May 23, 2026

Explore more Software Engineer System Design interview questions

Real questions from candidate reports, grouped by company, topic and role.

By company
Other categories for Software Engineer
System Design questions for other roles
Browse all