Software Engineer System Design Interview Questions

Practice 1,093 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
Speak logo
Speak
Hard
Software Engineer

Design scenario-based speaking feature

System Design: Scenario-Based Speaking Practice for a Multilingual Learning App Goal Design a scenario-based speaking practice feature where users sel...

System Design
6
0
81 people solved
Sep 6, 2025
NVIDIA logo
NVIDIA
Hard
Software Engineer

Design signals across power and clock domains

Question In a SoC with two power domains A and B, design the interface for a control signal signal_1 (a registered 1-bit control such as an enable/sta...

System Design
19
0
144 people solved
Sep 6, 2025
Snapchat logo
Snapchat
Medium
Software Engineer Locked

Design an Instagram Stories feature

This question evaluates backend system design competencies including distributed systems, scalability, data modeling, API design, media storage/transc...

System Design
6
0
78 people solved
Feb 8, 2026
Box logo
Box
Medium
Software Engineer

Diagnose failures via SSH and large logs

Diagnose failures via SSH and large logs Troubleshooting Large Logs Over SSH and Designing Centralized Logging Context You are on-call for a productio...

System Design
10
0
130 people solved
Aug 1, 2025
Google logo
Google
Hard
Software Engineer

Design lexicographic range query word store

Design a storage/data structure for a set of strings that supports lexicographic range queries. You are given a collection of words (strings), stored ...

System Design
11
0
121 people solved
Oct 5, 2025
Tesla logo
Tesla
Hard
Software Engineer

Design concurrency-safe shared payment account API

Design concurrency-safe shared payment account API Prevent Double-Spending When Two Users Pay Simultaneously from the Same Account Context You are des...

System Design
7
0
120 people solved
Jul 26, 2025
Medium
Software Engineer

4.2 Design a Collaborative Document Editor

Real-time collaborative editing is one of those features that feels magical when it works — and absolutely nightmarish to build from scratch. Google D...

System Design
14
1
183 people solved
Jan 31, 2026
Amazon logo
Amazon
Medium
Software EngineerSenior+

Design device telemetry pipeline for real-time and batch

Design a distributed system that ingests telemetry from millions of devices and supports both: - Real-time analytics (near-real-time dashboards/alerts...

System Design
6
0
107 people solved
Dec 17, 2025
Circle logo
Circle
Hard
Software Engineer

Design flight-price search service

Design flight-price search service System Design: Cheapest Flight Search Across Multiple Providers Context Design a backend system that searches multi...

System Design
18
0
172 people solved
Jul 17, 2025
DoorDash logo
DoorDash
Medium
Software Engineer

Design API that aggregates three downstream APIs

You are given three existing HTTP JSON APIs owned by other backend services: - Service A: GET /service-a?user_id={id} → returns basic user profile dat...

System Design
25
0
388 people solved
Nov 4, 2025
Airbnb logo
Airbnb
Hard
Software Engineer

Design a hot-listing waitlist API

Design a hot-listing waitlist API System Design: Waitlist API for High-Demand Listings Context You are designing a waitlist system for a marketplace t...

System Design
25
0
232 people solved
Jul 16, 2025
Resolve.Ai logo
Resolve.Ai
Medium
Software Engineer AI Locked

Design a Weighted Log Distributor

This question evaluates distributed systems architecture, load-balancing and traffic-routing competencies, along with fault tolerance, backpressure ha...

System Design
4
0
39 people solved
May 20, 2026
Anthropic logo
Anthropic
Hard
Software Engineer

Identify and mitigate deduplication program risks

System Design: Robust File Deduplication in the Real World Context You are designing a file deduplication tool that scans large directory trees on one...

System Design
27
0
194 people solved
Aug 14, 2025
Zipline logo
Zipline
Medium
Software Engineer

Design a Redundant Railroad Crossing

Design a safe and redundant control system for an at-grade railroad crossing used by road vehicles and pedestrians. The system should detect approachi...

System Design
5
0
51 people solved
Jan 25, 2026
Amazon logo
Amazon
Hard
Software Engineer

Design VPC, IP plan, management, storage, SSO

Design VPC, IP plan, management, storage, SSO System Design: Multi‑Layer VPC, IP Planning for 2,000 Servers, Fleet Management, Shared Storage, and SSO...

System Design
6
0
49 people solved
Aug 10, 2025
OpenAI logo
OpenAI
Medium
Software Engineer

Design webhook, POI, chat, CI/CD, payments

You are asked to design several large-scale backend systems in a single onsite session. The bar is breadth and judgment under time pressure: for each ...

System Design
22
0
340 people solved
Jul 4, 2025
Meta logo
Meta
Medium
Software Engineer

Design an online auction platform

Design an Online Auction System Design a scalable, highly available online auction platform where users can list items for auction and other users can...

System Design
3
0
57 people solved
Dec 7, 2025
Google logo
Google
Medium
Software Engineer

Design log management with auto-deletion

Design log management with auto-deletion Design a Bounded Log Management System with O(1) Victim Selection Context You are designing an in-memory log ...

System Design
6
0
76 people solved
Aug 4, 2025
Rippling logo
Rippling
Easy
Software Engineer AI Locked

How would you scale rule evaluation?

Design a scalable expense-policy rule engine for one million rules and thousand-record batches. Covers structured rules, predicate indexes, bitset eva...

System Design
5
0
100 people solved
Apr 17, 2025
Airbnb logo
Airbnb
Hard
Software Engineer

Design a group chat system

Design a WhatsApp-like group chat system. Core features: - 1:1 and group conversations - Send/receive text messages (assume small payloads) - Group me...

System Design
19
0
235 people solved
Jan 19, 2026

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