Practice Problems

Technical Catalog

Browse our library of distributed systems challenges. Each module includes scale requirements, functional constraints, and a sandbox environment.

Hard60-90 min

Design Ad Serving System

Design a real-time ad serving system that selects and serves relevant advertisements for a given request context, supporting campaign management, fast ad selection and ranking, and reliable logging.

GoogleFacebookAmazonMicrosoftTikTokNetflix

Ad TechReal-timeHigh ThroughputLow LatencyData LoggingRankingScalability

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Hard60-90 min

Design API Gateway System

Design an API Gateway that acts as a centralized entry point for multiple backend services, providing critical functionalities like routing, authentication, rate limiting, and advanced traffic management strategies.

AmazonGoogleNetflixMicrosoftMeta

API GatewayReverse ProxyLoad BalancingAuthenticationRate LimitingObservabilityMicroservicesTraffic Management

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Hard60-90 min

Design a Central Configuration Service

Design a highly available and fault-tolerant Central Configuration Service that allows microservices to fetch their configurations at startup and subscribe to live updates, while supporting safe rollouts, versioning, auditing, and access control.

GoogleAmazonNetflixMicrosoftMeta

Configuration ManagementDistributed SystemsHigh AvailabilityFault ToleranceCachingAccess ControlVersioning

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Hard60 min

Design Dropbox

Design a file sync and sharing service across devices, with conflict resolution and efficient storage.

storagesyncversioningclients

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Hard70 min

Design Etsy

Design a marketplace for handmade goods with search, listing, and order management.

marketplacesearchpayments

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Medium35 min

Design Feature Flag Service

Design a central feature flag service for gradual rollouts and experiments.

feature-flagsconfigrollout

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Hard45-60 min

Design Google Drive

Design a highly scalable and available file-sharing and synchronization system similar to Google Drive, capable of handling millions of users and petabytes of data across multiple devices.

GoogleDropboxMicrosoftAmazon

File StorageCloudSynchronizationNotificationsGoogleDistributed Systems

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Hard75 min

Design Google Search

Design a web-scale search engine with crawling, indexing, and ranked query serving.

searchindexingrankingcrawling

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Hard45 min

Design Instagram

Design an image sharing platform with user feeds, comments, and media storage.

mediafeedcdnstorage

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Medium45 min

Design Logging & Metrics Platform

Design a centralized logging and metrics collection platform for services.

observabilityloggingmetrics

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Medium40 min

Design Monitoring & Alerting System

Design a monitoring and alerting system that watches metrics and triggers notifications.

monitoringalertssre

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Hard60-90 min

Design a Music Streaming Platform (Spotify)

Design a global music streaming platform capable of serving billions of users with a vast catalog of songs, focusing on core playback and search functionalities.

SpotifyApple MusicAmazon MusicGoogle

StreamingDistributed SystemsCachingCDNStorageDatabaseScalabilityHigh AvailabilityLow Latency

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Hard70 min

Design Netflix

Design a subscription video streaming service with catalog, playback, and recommendations.

videostreamingcdnrecommendations

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Medium40 min

Design Notification System

Design a notification service that fanouts events to email, push, and SMS channels.

notificationsfanoutmultichannel

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Hard60 min

Design Payment System

Design a payment processing system for charging users and handling refunds safely.

paymentsidempotencyconsistency

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Medium30 min

Design Rate Limiter

Design a distributed rate limiting service for APIs across multiple instances.

rate-limitingdistributedtokens

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Medium50 min

Design Reddit

Design a community-based discussion platform with posts, comments, and voting.

feedvotingcommunities

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Easy30 min

Design Shopping Cart

Design a shopping cart service for an e-commerce site that handles items before checkout.

ecommercestatesession

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Hard60 min

Design Slack

Design a team messaging platform with channels, DMs, search, and presence.

messagingteamschannelspresence

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Easy25 min

Design TinyURL

Design a URL shortening service with redirection and analytics.

short-urlhashingredirect

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Hard45 min

Design Twitter

Design a scalable microblogging platform with news feed, fanout, and caching.

feedfanoutcachingtimeline

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Hard60 min

Design Uber

Design a ride sharing platform with driver-rider matching and real-time tracking.

matchinggeorealtime

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Medium45 min

Design WhatsApp

Design a real-time messaging system with read receipts and sync across devices.

messagingrealtimesync

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Hard45 min

Design Write Ahead Logging (WAL) System

Design a system that allows a database to handle very high write throughput while ensuring durability using Write Ahead Logging.

databasewalloggingstoragedurability

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Hard60 min

Design YouTube

Design a video sharing and streaming platform with recommendations.

videocdnstreaming

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Medium45 MIN

Design an ML Experiment Tracking and Analysis Platform

Design a scalable platform that allows machine learning engineers to track, store, analyze, and compare ML experiments. The system should support logging hyperparameters, metrics, artifacts, and enable reproducibility of experiments while handling thousands of concurrent training jobs.

Google

System DesignMachine Learning InfrastructureData PlatformsDistributed SystemsTime Series Companies

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