System Design Interview Prep

Walk me through a system design for [SYSTEM TYPE] (e.g., URL shortener, chat app, news feed, e-commerce, etc.).

Scale: [USERS / REQUESTS PER SECOND]

Structure your answer as a senior engineer would in an interview:

1. **Requirements Clarification**: Functional and non-functional requirements
2. **Back-of-Envelope Estimation**: Storage, bandwidth, QPS calculations
3. **High-Level Architecture**: Components and how they interact (describe a diagram)
4. **API Design**: Key endpoints with schemas
5. **Data Model**: Database schema and storage choices (SQL vs NoSQL vs both)
6. **Detailed Component Design**: Deep dive into 2-3 critical components
7. **Scaling Strategy**: Caching, sharding, load balancing, CDN
8. **Bottlenecks & Trade-offs**: What could fail and how to mitigate
9. **Monitoring & Alerting**: Key metrics to track
10. **Follow-Up Questions**: What an interviewer might ask next

Walk me through a system design for [SYSTEM TYPE] (e.g., URL shortener, chat app, news feed, e-commerce, etc.).

Scale: [USERS / REQUESTS PER SECOND]

Structure your answer as a senior engineer would in an interview:

1. **Requirements Clarification**: Functional and non-functional requirements
2. **Back-of-Envelope Estimation**: Storage, bandwidth, QPS calculations
3. **High-Level Architecture**: Components and how they interact (describe a diagram)
4. **API Design**: Key endpoints with schemas
5. **Data Model**: Database schema and storage choices (SQL vs NoSQL vs both)
6. **Detailed Component Design**: Deep dive into 2-3 critical components
7. **Scaling Strategy**: Caching, sharding, load balancing, CDN
8. **Bottlenecks & Trade-offs**: What could fail and how to mitigate
9. **Monitoring & Alerting**: Key metrics to track
10. **Follow-Up Questions**: What an interviewer might ask next