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
Coinbase logo
Coinbase
Hard
Software Engineer

Design real-time exchange data sync system

Design real-time exchange data sync system System Design: Real-Time Multi-Exchange Stock Data Ingestion and Live Web Page Context You are asked to des...

System Design
5
0
106 people solved
Jul 26, 2025
Palo logo
Palo
Medium
Software Engineer

Design a Scheduler and Metrics Platform

Design a cloud-native job scheduling and metrics monitoring platform for a Kubernetes-like environment. The platform should allow internal users to su...

System Design
2
0
20 people solved
Feb 20, 2026
Palo logo
Palo
Medium
Software Engineer

Design a thread-safe high-QPS rate limiter

Question You are building a backend service that must enforce API rate limits. Design and (at a high level) implement a rate limiter, then work throug...

System Design
5
0
44 people solved
Feb 18, 2026
DoorDash logo
DoorDash
Hard
Software EngineerSenior+

Design a scalable Instagram-like platform

Design a scalable Instagram-like platform Design: Instagram-like Photo/Video Sharing Platform (Technical Screen) Context Design a photo/video sharing ...

System Design
12
0
95 people solved
Jul 17, 2025
TikTok logo
TikTok
Hard
Software Engineer

Design a global notification service

Design a global notification service System Design: Globally Distributed Notification Service Context You are designing a multi-tenant notification pl...

System Design
10
0
73 people solved
Jul 17, 2025
TikTok logo
TikTok
Hard
Software Engineer

Design overload protection with load shedding

Design overload protection with load shedding Design: Maintain p99 Latency SLOs During Sudden Traffic Spikes Context You are designing a user-facing, ...

System Design
4
0
47 people solved
Jul 15, 2025
TikTok logo
TikTok
Hard
Software Engineer

Explain Kafka architecture and reliability semantics

Explain Kafka architecture and reliability semantics Kafka Architecture and End-to-End Semantics You are asked to explain Kafka's core architecture an...

System Design
5
0
57 people solved
Jul 15, 2025
TikTok logo
TikTok
Hard
Software Engineer

Explain Redis design, persistence, and scaling

Explain Redis design, persistence, and scaling Redis: Data Structures, Persistence, Eviction, High Availability, and Operational Pitfalls Context: You...

System Design
5
0
62 people solved
Jul 15, 2025
Instacart logo
Instacart
Hard
Software Engineer

Design an e-commerce category page

Design an e-commerce category page System Design: Category Page with Facets, Sorting, Pagination, SEO, Caching, Personalization, and Real-Time Updates...

System Design
4
0
79 people solved
Jul 15, 2025
Meta logo
Meta
Hard
Software Engineer

Design a scalable key-value configuration service

Design a scalable key-value configuration service Design a Globally Distributed Key–Value Configuration Service Background You are asked to design a g...

System Design
5
0
51 people solved
Jul 15, 2025
Meta logo
Meta
Hard
Software Engineer

Design a Dropbox-like file storage and sync service

Design a Dropbox-like file storage and sync service Design a cloud file storage and synchronization service like Dropbox / Google Drive. The system sh...

System Design
7
0
56 people solved
Jul 15, 2025
Illumio logo
Illumio
Medium
Software Engineer Locked

Design a Moderated Messaging Service

This question evaluates system design competency, covering scalable distributed architecture, data modeling, API design, integration with external mod...

System Design
2
0
23 people solved
Oct 20, 2025
OpenAI logo
OpenAI
Hard
Software Engineer Locked

Design a distributed crossword solving service

This question evaluates distributed systems and large-scale backend architecture skills, including task decomposition, scheduling, dynamic load balanc...

System Design
23
0
231 people solved
Oct 17, 2025
Flipster logo
Flipster
Easy
Software Engineer

Design 64-bit distributed IDs and a parking lot

You have two system-design prompts. 1) 64-bit database ID generator Design a service/library that generates globally unique 64-bit integer IDs for dat...

System Design
5
0
35 people solved
Feb 12, 2026
Microsoft logo
Microsoft
Hard
Software Engineer Locked

Design a job scheduler ETL pipeline system

This question evaluates a candidate's ability to architect scalable, reliable job scheduling and ETL orchestration systems, testing competencies in di...

System Design
5
0
106 people solved
Feb 11, 2026
Meta logo
Meta
Medium
Software Engineer Locked

Design a live video comments system

This question evaluates skills in designing scalable, low-latency real-time systems, covering fan-out delivery, ordering and consistency semantics, du...

System Design
8
0
64 people solved
Feb 11, 2026
Atlassian logo
Atlassian
Medium
Software Engineer Locked

Design a distributed rate limiter service

This question evaluates competency in distributed systems design, focusing on scalability, consistency, concurrency control, storage and sharding choi...

System Design
3
0
36 people solved
Feb 11, 2026
OpenAI logo
OpenAI
Hard
Software Engineer Locked

Design a crossword puzzle solver system

This question evaluates algorithm design, constraint solving, efficient lookup data structures, and system scalability for handling large dictionaries...

System Design
52
0
394 people solved
Feb 11, 2026
J.P. Morgan logo
J.P. Morgan
Medium
Software Engineer Locked

Design a cloud-based global property rental platform

This question evaluates skills in cloud-native system architecture, distributed systems design, scalability, security, data modeling, and operational ...

System Design
7
0
70 people solved
Feb 8, 2026
SoFi logo
SoFi
Medium
Software Engineer

Design market price change notifications

Design a system that notifies users when market prices change for the symbols they track. Context and requirements: - Users maintain a watchlist of sy...

System Design
14
0
200 people solved
Feb 4, 2026

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