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System Design Interview Questions

Designing large-scale systems: scalability, reliability, performance, and trade-offs.

1. How do you approach a system design problem?

View Answer

Step-by-Step Approach

  1. Clarify requirements (functional)
    • What features? Scale? User base?
  2. Non-functional requirements (NFR)
    • Latency? Throughput? Availability? Consistency?
  3. Back-of-envelope calculations
    • QPS, bandwidth, storage needed
  4. High-level architecture
    • Database, cache, queue, load balancer
  5. Dive into components
    • Database schema, API design, scaling strategy
  6. Discuss trade-offs
    • Why this choice? Alternatives?

Recommendation: Start monolithic, scale when needed

📚 Learn more: System Design Examples

See also: System Design Fundamentals, Building Blocks, Interview Questions Overview