Design question bank
140 standalone design and implementation prompts, expanded with functional requirements, non-functional requirements, and interview discussion points. Worked solutions are intentionally omitted.
Functional requirements (FR)
- Add functional requirements here.
Non-functional requirements (NFR)
- Add non‑functional requirements here.
How to use these prompts
Start by clarifying users, scope, and constraints. Convert the prompt into functional requirements (FR) and non-functional requirements (NFR), agree on measurable targets, then explore architecture, failure modes, and trade-offs. Each prompt retains its original details and adds a practice checklist; none supplies a worked solution.
Existing detailed pages
These prompts already have standalone pages, so the question bank links to those instead of duplicating them:
- Global rate-limiting platform
- Notification platform
- Distributed job scheduler
- Payment gateway and ledger
The separate Splitwise implementation deep dive is available alongside its new practice prompt in this bank.
Core Topics & Reference Material
Design subscription-based sports website which can display scores, game status, history for any games
Interactive and collaborative systems interview practice prompt.
Design for online card game say like poker or any other game
Interactive and collaborative systems interview practice prompt.
Design Truecaller
Application and platform design interview practice prompt.
Design a geographically partitioned multi-player card game, that supports multiple players, multiple games at a time
Transactions and commerce interview practice prompt.
design a system to fast lookup cars on the market according to the user's geo-position
Application and platform design interview practice prompt.
Design an airport service that will be used to allocate a free runway when the plane is about to land. Data structure for the same. What if the runway is not available? Message passing between control center and the plane. Focus on low-level design and code. Can the same runway be allocated to two different planes (locking)? Database storage needed?
Scheduling and resource allocation interview practice prompt.
Design a Ride Sharing Application where drivers can offer rides (origin, destination, no of seats), riders can request rides ( origin, destination, no of seats) and there is an algo to decide which driver should be given the trip in case of a collision ( maximum overlapping one)
Scheduling and resource allocation interview practice prompt.
Design a task planner. Different types of tasks are present – bug, feature and story. And their attributes are given. Also a Sprint which is a collection of tasks
Application and platform design interview practice prompt.
Implement a finite state machine
Messaging and event delivery interview practice prompt.
Design a system like Jira. It should have the following functionalities
Application and platform design interview practice prompt.
Design a stock exchange system. There is a list of stocks given with following attributes
Transactions and commerce interview practice prompt.
code a TextPad with following functionality
Application and platform design interview practice prompt.
Design Car Rental System like Zoomcar
Scheduling and resource allocation interview practice prompt.
Design a billing and auctioning system similar to EBay
Transactions and commerce interview practice prompt.
Design Q&A application as in Amazon,Walmart has it for each product
Learning and assessment products interview practice prompt.
Design a suggestion system
Search, analytics, and intelligence interview practice prompt.
Design and Implement a Simple Java GC (Java 7+)
Data systems and storage interview practice prompt.
Design LinkedIn
Application and platform design interview practice prompt.
Design a video upload system for a user with low network bandwidth
Media transfer and delivery interview practice prompt.
Design Learning Management System
Learning and assessment products interview practice prompt.
Design Survey similar to Google Forms / SurveyMonkey
Learning and assessment products interview practice prompt.
Design Logging Framework
Search, analytics, and intelligence interview practice prompt.
Design a locker
Scheduling and resource allocation interview practice prompt.
Design a calendar Application (similar like Google Calendar)
Scheduling and resource allocation interview practice prompt.
Design Guitar Inventory System
Application and platform design interview practice prompt.
Desing Payment System
Transactions and commerce interview practice prompt.
Design a stock trading system
Transactions and commerce interview practice prompt.
Design a Json Parser from scratch
Data systems and storage interview practice prompt.
Design Chat Based application like whatsapp/wechat
Messaging and event delivery interview practice prompt.
Design a home automation sytem to remotely control all the switches, devices in a home
Application and platform design interview practice prompt.
Design Maps Navigator Client for different transportation types
Learning and assessment products interview practice prompt.
Design Meeting Scheduler
Scheduling and resource allocation interview practice prompt.
Design and Implement a logger library that applications can use to log messages
Search, analytics, and intelligence interview practice prompt.
Design a configuration management system
Search, analytics, and intelligence interview practice prompt.
Design Amazon comments filtering system
Application and platform design interview practice prompt.
Design a Vending Machine
Transactions and commerce interview practice prompt.
Design Splitwise
Application and platform design interview practice prompt.
Design Mock Interview System like pramp
Application and platform design interview practice prompt.
Design Application Tracking System (ATS) like greenhouse
Search, analytics, and intelligence interview practice prompt.
Design a Logistics System
Search, analytics, and intelligence interview practice prompt.
Design CSV parser
Application and platform design interview practice prompt.
Design message queueing system
Messaging and event delivery interview practice prompt.
Design Employee Management Platform which includes payroll,IT,employee benefits and all other employee operations in one place
Application and platform design interview practice prompt.
Design User Engagment platform
Application and platform design interview practice prompt.
Design product experience platform like pendo
Application and platform design interview practice prompt.
Design Chess Game
Interactive and collaborative systems interview practice prompt.
Design Live Auction platform for IPL / EPL
Transactions and commerce interview practice prompt.
Design Unit Testing Application
Application and platform design interview practice prompt.
Design Browser testing Application like browserstack / sauce labs
Application and platform design interview practice prompt.
Design Real time collaboration application for the teams
Interactive and collaborative systems interview practice prompt.
Design Visual workplace for remote teams
Interactive and collaborative systems interview practice prompt.
Design Online UML Diagram Tool like lucidchart
Application and platform design interview practice prompt.
Design Parking Lot
Scheduling and resource allocation interview practice prompt.
Design online audio/video file downloader
Media transfer and delivery interview practice prompt.
Design Inventory System
Application and platform design interview practice prompt.
Design Warehouse Management System
Application and platform design interview practice prompt.
Design Game Streaming platform
Media transfer and delivery interview practice prompt.
Design Real-Time Translation platform
Application and platform design interview practice prompt.
Design Community based discussion platform
Application and platform design interview practice prompt.
Design application for restaurant / malls to efficiently handle waiting queue and optimizely assign the table
Application and platform design interview practice prompt.
Design online assesment platform for exam's like gre / tofel
Learning and assessment products interview practice prompt.
Design online customer verifaction platform for digital on-boarding(KYC) of the users for bank and others client's
Identity, trust, and access interview practice prompt.
Design Secure Content Management platform
Identity, trust, and access interview practice prompt.
Design Freelancing hiring platform
Application and platform design interview practice prompt.
Design monitoring and alert system for the production as well and other enviroments
Search, analytics, and intelligence interview practice prompt.
Design digital-video KYC (know your customer) verification system
Media transfer and delivery interview practice prompt.
Design online e-fiiling online income tax returns service
Application and platform design interview practice prompt.
Design job posting system dedicated to blue and grey collar workers. (multiple langs / native lang)
Application and platform design interview practice prompt.
Design System Simiar to the Product-hunt (share and discover new products)
Application and platform design interview practice prompt.
Design service like Clipboard. (try to store the maximum clips)
Application and platform design interview practice prompt.
Design system for salary info,comparsion and other info similar to the glassdoor salary / salarry.level
Application and platform design interview practice prompt.
Design pricing / product comparision system
Application and platform design interview practice prompt.
Design Virtual Event Platform for Communities / Enterprise
Application and platform design interview practice prompt.
Design system for short video/content sharing like Tiktok
Media transfer and delivery interview practice prompt.
Design Short Story Telling (Text/Images) platform like Terribly Tiny Tales
Application and platform design interview practice prompt.
Design a user activity tracking system for user on mobile
Search, analytics, and intelligence interview practice prompt.
Design in-memory (Questions like write to add,remove the table,etc)
Application and platform design interview practice prompt.
Design a login API which is secure even if SSL certification is compromised
Identity, trust, and access interview practice prompt.
How to design an API whose response will have the response from 3 other different microservices
Application and platform design interview practice prompt.
Design system which exposes two APIs
Media transfer and delivery interview practice prompt.
Design a torrent service, end to end
Media transfer and delivery interview practice prompt.
Design system like Bigbasket (local retailer's)
Application and platform design interview practice prompt.
Design a limit order book for trading system
Transactions and commerce interview practice prompt.
Design a Cache Mechanism
Data systems and storage interview practice prompt.
Design a personal stock / investment protfolio system
Transactions and commerce interview practice prompt.
Design a electronic signature system like DocuSign / EasySign
Application and platform design interview practice prompt.
Design a generic coupon/promocode system
Transactions and commerce interview practice prompt.
Design of a quizzing app
Learning and assessment products interview practice prompt.
Design a system (initially one node/server) that could handle requests on the scale of millions. It should return a unique id for each request (The id should be unique in sense that there would be only one such id ever generated)
Application and platform design interview practice prompt.
Order-Management-System-or-System-Design
Application and platform design interview practice prompt.
Implementation of Kafka
Application and platform design interview practice prompt.
Design and Implement Rocksdb
Data systems and storage interview practice prompt.
Design and Develop the Zookeeper using Rocksdb and Google's BigTable
Data systems and storage interview practice prompt.
Developing a message queueing system
Messaging and event delivery interview practice prompt.
Design a service to view/add/remove viewers of a document (like the feature in google doc)
Application and platform design interview practice prompt.
Design an Online Auction
Transactions and commerce interview practice prompt.
Design for storing chemicals with their constituents in an efficiently retrievable format
Application and platform design interview practice prompt.
Design and Architecture - Appointment booking for a hospital where each doctor can open slots independently of any time period
Scheduling and resource allocation interview practice prompt.
Design Online Exam Portal
Learning and assessment products interview practice prompt.
Build the Google Stock Wizard
Transactions and commerce interview practice prompt.
Design the Food Ordering System like Swiggy/Zomato
Application and platform design interview practice prompt.
Design the Bill Summary Feature
Application and platform design interview practice prompt.
Design Learning app (Design system where teachers can upload the content and stuedents can view that content.)
Media transfer and delivery interview practice prompt.
Design Navigation Alerts System. (Similar like Google Map Functionality.)
Search, analytics, and intelligence interview practice prompt.
Design a system which improves the quality of the data
Application and platform design interview practice prompt.
Design a Plagiarism checker
Application and platform design interview practice prompt.
Design a distributed Cache
Data systems and storage interview practice prompt.
Design a business rule based engine
Application and platform design interview practice prompt.
Design Authentication/Authorization Service which supports(otp,OAuth, etc.)
Identity, trust, and access interview practice prompt.
Design a SMS validator system
Messaging and event delivery interview practice prompt.
Design(HLD) Zipkin - A request tracing system for distributed applications. Example - A request is flowing through multiple microservices, system should be able to trace the time spent by the request and sequence followed by it
Search, analytics, and intelligence interview practice prompt.
Design Ads system for a website
Application and platform design interview practice prompt.
Design an online code judge
Application and platform design interview practice prompt.
Design Splunk like log manager system supporting queries with filters on last min, hr, day, week etc
Search, analytics, and intelligence interview practice prompt.
Design Linkedin Suggest connections feature
Search, analytics, and intelligence interview practice prompt.
Implement a wide column store like Cassandra (bonus : support secondary indexes)
Data systems and storage interview practice prompt.
Create an online music recommendation system which suggests songs according to user taste
Search, analytics, and intelligence interview practice prompt.
Design a test taking website type service where user can register/login,
Identity, trust, and access interview practice prompt.
Design a service for showing HeatMap of Swiggy / Zomato agents at a time
Search, analytics, and intelligence interview practice prompt.
Design Webhook Dispatcher
Messaging and event delivery interview practice prompt.
Implement service to Find the recently viewed listings on the website by the user. Example a user looked for hotels in Bangalore. Design a system responsible to return the recent listings for a user
Search, analytics, and intelligence interview practice prompt.
Design a Jackpot Machine
Application and platform design interview practice prompt.
Designing a ID card system which employees use to access any zone/premises
Identity, trust, and access interview practice prompt.
Design a Bar Graph Library
Application and platform design interview practice prompt.
Gym Managment System
Scheduling and resource allocation interview practice prompt.
Design an concurrent History tracking system where we can store and track history of registered entities. We should be able to onboard service and their entities to our system and start tracking changes being made to them
Search, analytics, and intelligence interview practice prompt.
Design a system which keeps track of leaders for some contest. Like referrals leader
Search, analytics, and intelligence interview practice prompt.
Design a key value store and an Index
Data systems and storage interview practice prompt.
Design an analytics to display machines which have valid certificates,Design the system with valid dashboard with all the machines with good/bad certificates
Identity, trust, and access interview practice prompt.
Design a service that calls any passed endpoint at a fixed interval
Application and platform design interview practice prompt.
Design System where User can create alerts on StockOptions
Transactions and commerce interview practice prompt.
Design a UUID generator
Application and platform design interview practice prompt.
Design a scalable weather service that pulls data from an API
Application and platform design interview practice prompt.
You are required to implement an in-memory cache module/library which you will embed in your application to improve the application performance, by holding heavily accessed (read/written) application specific objects. To start, we would begin with following minimal requirements
Data systems and storage interview practice prompt.
Design library management system
Messaging and event delivery interview practice prompt.