1. Design a Rate Limiter Every company covered this.
Know: Sliding window algorithms, Redis, race condition handling, token bucket vs. leaky bucket models.
2. Design a Chat Application A WhatsApp-style typing indicator alone can drive a 45-minute discussion.
Know: WebSockets, Redis Pub/Sub, message queues, offline message delivery.
3. Design a URL Shortener Appears straightforward. Becomes complex quickly.
Know: Base62 encoding, collision resolution, analytics tracking, Redis-based caching.
4. Design a Notification System
Know: Push vs. pull architecture, Kafka for asynchronous delivery, retry mechanisms, user preference management.
5. Design a Payment System JPMorgan asked this. So did multiple others.
Know: Idempotency keys, Saga pattern, ACID transactions vs. eventual consistency.
6. Design an API Rate Limiter Different from #1. This focuses on distributed system design.
Know: Token bucket algorithms, Redis INCR, Lua scripting, multi-node coordination.
7. Design a Video Streaming Platform
Know: CDN architecture, chunked uploads, adaptive bitrate streaming, large-scale storage systems.
8. Design a Ride-Hailing Application
Know: Real-time location tracking, matching algorithms, surge pricing strategies, live event processing.
9. Design an E-commerce Checkout System
Know: Inventory reservation, flash-sale scalability, payment retry workflows, order state management.
10. Design a Search Autocomplete System
Know: Trie data structures, frequency-based ranking, result caching, sub-100ms latency optimization.