Preparing for high-level design (HLD) interviews involves a deep understanding of system architecture, scalability, and real-world problem-solving. Here are 100 HLD interview questions you can use to prepare:
System Design Basics
- How would you design a URL shortening service like TinyURL? here
- Design a parking lot system.here
- How would you design an online book reader system like Kindle here
- Design an ATM machine. here
- How would you design a rate-limiting system for an API?
- Design a distributed file storage service like Google Drive.
- How would you design a video streaming service like YouTube?
- Design a scalable notification system.
- How would you design a search autocomplete system?
- Design a logging and monitoring system for a distributed service.
- How would you design a chat system like WhatsApp?
- Design an e-commerce website like Amazon.
- How would you design a recommendation system like Netflix?
- Design a news feed system like Facebook’s.
- How would you design a social media platform like Twitter?
- Design a system to schedule jobs (e.g., cron job scheduler).
- How would you design a web crawler?
- Design a ride-sharing system like Uber.
- How would you design a scalable ticket-booking system?
- Design a notification system for social media.
- How would you design a scalable document editor like Google Docs?
- Design an image hosting service like Imgur.
- How would you design a payment gateway like Stripe?
- Design a file transfer system like Dropbox.
- How would you design a multiplayer online game server?
- Design a location-based search service like Google Maps.
- How would you design a content delivery network (CDN)?
- Design a scalable messaging queue system like Kafka.
- How would you design an email service like Gmail?
- Design a blogging platform like Medium.
- How would you design a notification delivery service?
- Design a cloud-based photo album system.
- How would you design a scalable customer support ticketing system?
- Design a key-value store like Redis.
- How would you design a high-throughput analytics platform?
Scalability and Performance
- How would you scale a service to handle millions of users?
- How would you design a load balancer?
- How would you handle rate-limiting in a distributed system?
- How would you design a system to handle high-traffic spikes (e.g., flash sales)?
- How would you design a system to handle millions of file uploads simultaneously?
- How would you design a scalable metrics and monitoring system?
- How would you reduce latency in a global system with users from different regions?
- How would you scale a distributed system with minimal downtime?
- How would you design a system for consistent hashing?
- How would you implement horizontal scaling in a database?
- How would you design a caching system for high-traffic websites?
- How would you design a rate limiter to handle burst traffic efficiently?
- How would you design a data replication system across multiple data centres?
- How would you design a high-availability service?
- How would you design a system to ensure eventual consistency in a distributed environment?
Security and Privacy
- How would you design a system to authenticate millions of users securely?
- How would you handle user session management in a distributed system?
- How would you implement data encryption for sensitive data in a system?
- How would you design a secure API gateway?
- How would you handle data privacy in a distributed system?
- How would you secure user data in a high-traffic service?
- How would you design a system to prevent DDoS attacks?
- How would you design a system with secure access control and permissions?
- How would you implement secure communication between microservices?
- How would you design a system to detect and prevent fraud?
Database Design
- How would you design a system to handle millions of database transactions?
- How would you design a scalable NoSQL database?
- How would you design a system to store and manage large-scale time-series data?
- How would you design a distributed database with high availability?
- How would you design a system with both SQL and NoSQL databases?
- How would you design a database sharding strategy for scalability?
- How would you implement data partitioning in a distributed database system?
- How would you handle schema migrations in a high-availability system?
- How would you design a system for multi-region database replication?
- How would you design a distributed database with ACID properties?
Real-Time Systems
- How would you design a real-time chat application?
- How would you design a real-time bidding system like Google Ads?
- How would you design a real-time leaderboard for a gaming platform?
- How would you design a real-time event streaming system?
- How would you design a real-time collaboration tool like Figma?
- How would you design a real-time traffic monitoring system?
- How would you design a real-time stock trading platform?
- How would you design a real-time fraud detection system?
- How would you design a real-time sports analytics system?
- How would you design a real-time vehicle tracking system?
Microservices and APIs
- How would you design a microservices architecture for a large-scale system?
- How would you design an API rate-limiting solution?
- How would you design an API gateway for microservices?
- How would you design a service discovery mechanism in a microservices architecture?
- How would you design an inter-service communication system for microservices?
- How would you design a microservices system to ensure backward compatibility?
- How would you design a distributed tracing system for microservices?
- How would you design a data consistency mechanism across microservices?
- How would you implement version control for APIs in a large system?
- How would you handle circuit-breaking in a microservices architecture?
Miscellaneous
- How would you design a distributed transaction system?
- How would you design a notification delivery service using webhooks?
- How would you design a system to handle billions of write requests per second?
- How would you design a system for video transcoding at scale?
- How would you design a service for personalized advertisements?
- How would you design a system to manage a large number of IoT devices?
- How would you design a system for real-time data analytics on streaming data?
- How would you design a document version control system like Git?
- How would you design a content moderation system for a social platform?
- How would you design a system for machine learning model deployment and serving?
These questions cover various aspects of system design, ranging from scalability to performance, database architecture, and real-time systems.