System Design Interview Guide
For FAANG & Top Tech Companies
System Design Fundamentals
- Scalability & Performance Optimization
- Horizontal vs Vertical Scaling
- Load Balancing (Round Robin, Least Connections, IP Hash)
- Content Delivery Networks (CDN) - Caching, Edge Locations
- Caching Strategies (Write-through, Write-back, Write-around)
- Database Read/Write Optimization
- FAANG Questions:
- How do you scale a system to handle 1 million users?
- Explain how a CDN works.
- What are the trade-offs of caching?
Database Design & Optimization
- SQL vs NoSQL - When to Use Which
- Indexing & Query Optimization Techniques
- Database Sharding, Replication & Partitioning
- ACID vs BASE Properties
- Distributed Databases (CockroachDB, Google Spanner, DynamoDB, Cassandra)
- FAANG Questions:
- How do you design a database for an e-commerce platform?
- What is the difference between partitioning and sharding?
- How do you optimize slow database queries?
API Design & Communication
- REST vs GraphQL vs gRPC - Differences & Use Cases
- API Rate Limiting & Pagination Strategies
- Authentication & Authorization (OAuth, JWT, API Keys, SSO)
- Microservices Communication - API Gateway, Service Mesh, Circuit Breaker
- FAANG Questions:
- How would you design a REST API for a ride-sharing app?
- What are the advantages of GraphQL over REST?
Distributed Systems & Scalability
- CAP Theorem - Trade-offs in Distributed Systems
- Consistency Models (Strong, Eventual, Causal, Read-your-writes, Monotonic Reads)
- Leader Election (Raft, Paxos, Zookeeper)
- Eventual Consistency & Conflict Resolution
- FAANG Questions:
- What is the CAP theorem, and why is it important?
- How does leader election work in distributed databases?
Security, Observability & Deployment
- Authentication & Authorization
- OAuth, OpenID Connect (SSO)
- Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)
- API Gateway Security & Token Expiry
- FAANG Questions:
- How would you secure an API used by millions of users?
- What are the differences between OAuth and JWT?
Real-World System Design Case Studies
- Design Twitter - Timeline Feed, Caching, Sharding
- Design WhatsApp - End-to-End Encryption, Message Delivery
- Design Amazon/Flipkart - Product Catalog, Order Management
- Design Stripe/Razorpay - Secure Payments, Fraud Detection
- FAANG Questions:
- How would you design a scalable news feed like Facebook?
- What are the challenges in building a messaging app like WhatsApp?
- How would you design an e-commerce checkout system?
Bonus Topics
- Data Structures & Algorithms for System Design
- How to Design Rate Limiting Systems?
- How to Design Real-time Analytics Systems?
- Distributed Caching Strategies (Redis, Memcached)
- Feature Flagging & A/B Testing in Large Systems
- Containerization & Orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes, Helm)
