System Design questions





1. What is the primary goal of the system in terms of scalability, reliability, and performance?

2. Are there any specific SLAs for latency, throughput, or uptime (e.g., 99.99%)?

3. What is the expected traffic volume and user growth over the next 1-3 years?

4. Are there existing systems or dependencies this system must integrate with?

5. Are there critical use cases or edge cases that must not fail?

6. What are the trade-offs you want to prioritize (e.g., consistency vs availability, speed vs cost)?

7. Are there any data storage or retrieval constraints, such as real-time processing or archival needs?

8. What are the disaster recovery and fault-tolerance expectations?

9. Are there specific security requirements, such as encryption, authentication methods, or regulatory compliance (e.g., GDPR, HIPAA)?

10. Should the system support multi-region deployments for low latency or redundancy?

11. What level of monitoring and observability is required, and which tools or frameworks are preferred?

12. Are there constraints or preferences for the tech stack, including cloud providers or frameworks?

13. Are there anticipated bottlenecks or challenges, such as peak traffic during events or batch processing?

14. Should the system handle versioning or backward compatibility for APIs?

15. Are there specific expectations for CI/CD pipelines or deployment frequency?

16. Should the design include horizontal scaling, vertical scaling, or both?

17. What are the expectations for testing, such as unit, integration, and load testing?

18. Should the design consider eventual migrations or system expansions?

19. Are there third-party services or APIs that must be relied upon or avoided?

20. What metrics define the success of the system after implementation?

Just ensure:

You frame them concisely and logically, showing genuine curiosity.

Tailor the questions based on context (e.g., if they’ve already explained constraints, avoid repeating).

Example:
"Before I propose a design, I'd like to clarify a few points to align with the expectations. Could you share the anticipated traffic volume and user growth over the next 1-3 years?"

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