📖 Sources¶
These 1000 questions were collected and synthesized from the internet sources below, FAANG interview reports, and industry blogs/books. Many questions are cited from multiple sources.
🌍 Core interview platforms¶
- Hello Interview — System Design in a Hurry
- Hello Interview — Core Concepts
- Hello Interview — Bitly URL Shortener
- Hello Interview — Distributed Rate Limiter
- Hello Interview — Dropbox / File Storage
- Hello Interview — Uber System Design
- Hello Interview — Elasticsearch Deep Dive
- System Design Primer (GitHub, donnemartin)
- ByteByteGo — System Design Interview
- System Design School — URL Shortener
- System Design School — Netflix
- System Design School — Dropbox
🎯 Question banks and ranked lists¶
- DesignGurus — 50 Advanced System Design Interview Questions
- DesignGurus — 25 Fundamental System Design Concepts
- DesignGurus — System Design Interview Guide for Beginners
- InterviewBit — Top System Design Interview Questions (2025)
- GeeksforGeeks — Top 10 System Design Interview Questions
- GeeksforGeeks — Distributed System Interview Questions
- GeeksforGeeks — Paxos vs Raft
- GeeksforGeeks — Consistent Hashing
- GeeksforGeeks — SQL vs NoSQL in System Design
- Java67 — Top 50 Easy/Medium/Hard SD Questions 2026
- Dev.to — Top 50 System Design Interview Questions (somadevtoo)
- Dev.to — 64 Ranked System Design Questions
- Dev.to — System Design Interviews Were HARD Until I Learned These
- Dev.to — Message Queues (Kafka, RabbitMQ, SQS)
- Dev.to — Unlocking Message Queues for SD Interviews
- Roadmap.sh — Top 30 System Design Questions
- Tech Interview Handbook — System Design
- FreeCodeCamp — Systems Design Interview Handbook
🏢 FAANG and big-company guides¶
- IGotAnOffer — System Design Interviews & Prep
- interviewing.io — Senior Engineer's Guide to SD Interview
- interviewing.io — System Design Interview Questions & Tips
- Tryexponent — System Design Interview Guide
- Tryexponent — Distributed Message Queue Mock Interview
- Tryexponent — Rate Limiter Design
- Tryexponent — SQL vs NoSQL Databases
- Educative — Senior Software Engineer System Design
- Educative — Airbnb System Design Questions
- Educative — Dropbox System Design
- Educative — System Design Interview Prep: 20 things
- System Design Handbook — FAANG SD Interview
- System Design Handbook — Distributed Systems Questions
- System Design Handbook — Netflix Interview Guide
- System Design Handbook — Spotify Interview Guide
- System Design Handbook — Uber Interview Guide
- System Design Handbook — Top 40 Questions 2026
- TechInterview.org — Staff+ Engineer System Design
- TechInterview.org — Uber Interview Guide 2026
- TechInterview.org — Video Streaming Platform
- TechInterview.org — Consistent Hashing
- Designgurus Substack — 30 SD Interview Questions
- Designgurus Substack — 50 SD Concepts for Beginners
- Designgurus Substack — Complete NoSQL Database Guide
- Designgurus Substack — Kafka vs RabbitMQ
🛠️ Microservices, queues, distributed¶
- Devinterview-io — Microservices Interview Questions
- WeCreateProblems — 100+ Microservices Questions
- Vinsys — Top 30 Microservices Questions 2026
- Algoroq — Microservices Questions for Senior Engineers
- Turing — 100+ Microservices Questions
- MentorCruise — 80 Distributed Systems Questions
- Medium — 15 Distributed Systems Questions
- Medium — Raft and Paxos Consensus Algorithms
- Medium — Distributed Consensus Paxos vs Raft
- Medium — System Design Dropbox/Google Drive
- Medium — 25 Software Design Questions (javinpaul)
- Medium — 50 Most Asked SD Questions
- Confluent — Real-Time Streaming Prevents Fraud
- Tinybird — Real-Time Fraud Detection System
☁️ Cloud, Kubernetes, infrastructure¶
- Edureka — Top 50 Kubernetes Questions 2025
- DataCamp — Top 46 Kubernetes Questions 2026
- Hirist — 20+ Kubernetes Questions 2026
- Index.dev — Top 20 Cloud Architecture Lead Questions
- GitHub sv222 — Cloud Engineer Questions
- Simplilearn — 40 Kubernetes Questions
- LastRound AI — 40 Cloud Architect Questions 2026
- igmGuru — Top 35+ GCP Questions 2026
📚 Academic / technical sources¶
- Raft paper — In Search of an Understandable Consensus
- arXiv — Paxos vs Raft (Heidi Howard)
- Cambridge — Paxos vs Raft (Heidi Howard PDF)
- Google SRE Book — Managing Critical State
🔗 Other useful resources¶
- HighScalability — Consistent Hashing Algorithm
- Singhajit — How Consistent Hashing Works
- PankajTanwar — Google Drive / Dropbox Design
- BAastik Anand — System Design Concepts
- Kite Metric — Mastering Distributed Systems
🎓 Recommended books¶
- Designing Data-Intensive Applications — Martin Kleppmann
- System Design Interview Vol. 1 & 2 — Alex Xu
- Building Microservices — Sam Newman
- Site Reliability Engineering — Google
- The Site Reliability Workbook — Google
- Database Internals — Alex Petrov
- Streaming Systems — Tyler Akidau
- Release It! — Michael T. Nygard
- Software Engineering at Google — Titus Winters et al.
- Staff Engineer — Will Larson