Uber
Hard
Software EngineerDesign real-time driver heatmap system
System Design
48
0
August 1, 2025
API Design Interview Questions
API design questions test your ability to create clean, scalable, and secure interfaces between services and clients.
Expect discussions on REST vs GraphQL, pagination strategies, rate limiting, versioning, and authentication patterns.
Interviewers want to see practical design sense, not just theoretical knowledge of HTTP methods.
935Questions
167Companies
Easy 44 • Medium 1 • Hard 468Difficulty mix
Common API design interview patterns
- REST resource modeling and URL structure
- GraphQL vs REST trade-offs
- Cursor-based vs offset pagination
- Rate limiting and throttling strategies
- API versioning approaches
- Idempotency for safe retries
- Authentication and authorization patterns (OAuth, JWT, API keys)
API design interview questions
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DoorDash
Hard
Software EngineerDesign a 3-day donation platform
System Design
66
0
August 13, 2025
Anthropic
Hard
Software EngineerDesign a low-latency ML inference API
ML System Design
39
0
September 6, 2025
Optiver
Hard
Software EngineerDesign low-latency trading infrastructure
System Design
41
0
December 5, 2025
OpenAI
Nan
Software EngineerDesign a distributed crossword fill solver
System Design
33
0
January 17, 2026
Rippling
Easy
Software EngineerDesign a news aggregator system
System Design
56
0
December 5, 2025
Uber
Medium
Software EngineerDesign a meeting scheduler and shopping cart
System Design
31
0
March 1, 2026
Airtable
Medium
Software EngineerDesign NL-to-Formula assistant for Airtable
ML System Design
45
0
November 4, 2025
Anthropic
Hard
Software EngineerDesign a concurrent web crawler
System Design
41
0
September 6, 2025
Scale AI
Medium
Software EngineerDesign pipeline using classification and embedding services
ML System Design
56
0
December 8, 2025
DoorDash
Hard
Software EngineerDesign a resilient dasher payment system
System Design
46
0
September 6, 2025
Ramp
Medium
Software EngineerDesign a banking system with payments and merging
System Design
54
0
January 22, 2026
Together AI
Hard
Software EngineerDesign a GPU-aware pod scheduler
System Design
30
0
August 7, 2025
Mistral AI
Hard
Software EngineerBuild and design a Mistral RAG agent
ML System Design
36
0
September 6, 2025
Anthropic
Hard
Software EngineerDesign a GPU inference API
ML System Design
47
0
August 1, 2025
Rippling
Medium
Software EngineerDesign a delivery cost system
System Design
38
0
July 31, 2025
Confluent
Hard
Software EngineerDesign a temporary email service
System Design
42
0
July 27, 2025
Salesforce
Medium
Software EngineerDesign a configurable monthly API rate limiter
System Design
39
0
February 12, 2026
OpenAI
Hard
Software EngineerDesign a GPU credit system and scheduler
ML System Design
30
0
August 13, 2025
OpenAI
Hard
Software EngineerDesign a Slack-like real-time messaging system
System Design
45
0
February 12, 2026
Common mistakes with API design
- Overusing POST for operations that should be GET
- Not designing for backward compatibility
- Exposing internal implementation details in the API surface
- Ignoring error response formats and status codes
- Not considering rate limiting from the start
How API design questions are evaluated
Design for the consumer, not the implementation.
Show awareness of backward compatibility and versioning from day one.
Discuss security considerations naturally as part of the design.