Chime
Easy
Software EngineerDesign load balancing, caching, and idempotent APIs
System Design
18
0
November 13, 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
Filter and sort
Roblox
Hard
Software EngineerDesign real-time game matchmaking service
System Design
21
0
September 6, 2025
Harvey AI
Hard
Software EngineerDetermine identical files ignoring metadata
System Design
22
0
September 6, 2025
ZipHQ
Hard
Software EngineerDesign in-memory DB with TTL and history
System Design
21
0
September 6, 2025
Anthropic
Hard
Software EngineerReview an inference API design for scale
ML System Design
11
0
September 6, 2025
Netflix
Medium
Software EngineerModel data for an ads platform
System Design
21
0
January 30, 2026
Snowflake
Easy
Software EngineerDesign a disk-backed KV store under contention
System Design
22
0
March 1, 2026
Scale AI
Medium
Software EngineerDesign a large-scale ticketing system
System Design
19
0
December 8, 2025
Rippling
Medium
Software EngineerDesign a user behavior monitoring system
System Design
15
1
December 4, 2025
Databricks
Hard
Software EngineerDesign a digital game shop backend
System Design
21
0
December 10, 2025
Airbnb
Medium
Software EngineerDesign a scalable notification system
System Design
14
0
November 20, 2025
Instacart
Hard
Software EngineerDesign scalable inventory system and avoid races
System Design
16
0
September 6, 2025
Airbnb
Hard
Backend EngineerDesign a Rental Marketplace Backend
System Design
14
0
March 7, 2026
Snowflake
Medium
Software EngineerDesign a distributed tree node counter
System Design
16
0
July 26, 2025
Capital One
Medium
Software EngineerDesign a highly reliable account balance system
System Design
20
0
December 25, 2025
Coinbase
Medium
Software EngineerDesign a food delivery system
System Design
13
0
January 22, 2026
Airbnb
Medium
Software EngineerDesign and implement an Airbnb wallet
System Design
9
0
September 6, 2025
Rippling
Hard
Software EngineerDesign a news feed aggregator
System Design
10
0
July 26, 2025
OpenAI
Hard
Software EngineerDesign a Distributed Crossword Solver
System Design
11
0
April 7, 2026
Parafin
Hard
Software EngineerDesign a loan application system
System Design
12
0
July 31, 2025
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.