2.
Software Design and Problem Solving Challenges
How would you design a distributed lock system that works reliably across
multiple services?
Use a centralized system like Redis with SET NX and TTL to create ephemeral locks.
Ensure lock renewal and safe release with unique tokens to avoid deleting others' locks.
Use Redlock algorithm for distributed Redis clusters to ensure quorum-based locking.
Consider using etcd or Zookeeper for stronger consistency guarantees.
Implement fallback logic or queuing when lock acquisition fails.
How do you approach designing a system that needs to scale from 100 to
100,000 concurrent users?
Start with stateless services and scale horizontally using orchestration platforms (e.g.,
Kubernetes).
Use distributed caches, async processing, and load balancers to reduce bottlenecks.
Adopt partitioning and sharding strategies at the database and messaging layers.
Monitor and auto-scale based on key metrics like CPU, memory, and queue depth.
Design services to degrade gracefully under high load (e.g., reject optional features).
How do you handle coordination between services when implementing a
business-critical workflow?
Use the Saga pattern to maintain eventual consistency across multiple services.
Choose between choreography (event-driven) and orchestration (central controller)
models.
Track transaction state using a distributed store or workflow engine (e.g., Camunda,
Temporal).
Design for compensating actions instead of relying on distributed transactions.
Implement observability (correlation IDs, logs, metrics) to monitor the full workflow
lifecycle.
How would you identify and fix bottlenecks in a large-scale production system?
Use profiling tools (e.g., async-profiler, JFR) to identify CPU, memory, or IO constraints.
Enable distributed tracing and correlate slow spans with service calls and queries.
Monitor GC behavior, heap usage, thread contention, and database query latency.
Compare latency percentiles (P95, P99) before and after architectural or infra changes.
Isolate problem areas through canary deployments or traffic shadowing.
How would you design a multi-region active-active architecture for high
availability?
Use global DNS or anycast to route users to the nearest region automatically.
Ensure data synchronization using conflict-free replication (e.g., CRDTs, vector clocks).
Apply write forwarding or leader election to avoid split-brain scenarios.
Use cloud-native storage or distributed databases with multi-region consistency (e.g.,
Spanner, CockroachDB).
Test regional failure scenarios regularly using chaos engineering practices.
How would you structure a system to ensure high observability in complex
distributed environments?
Implement structured logging and propagate correlation IDs through all service
boundaries.
Use centralized logging platforms (e.g., ELK, Loki) and metrics aggregation (e.g.,
Prometheus).
Enable distributed tracing with tools like Jaeger or OpenTelemetry.
Define and track SLIs, SLOs, and error budgets per service.
Add health, readiness, and liveness probes to every service.
How would you detect and recover from data corruption in a system where
consistency is critical?
Use checksums, versioning, or hash-based validation to detect corruption during
reads/writes.
Maintain audit logs and immutable change history for all critical entities.
Replicate data across availability zones with quorum validation to detect discrepancies.
Use snapshotting and periodic backup with recovery pipelines and integrity verification.
Build recovery playbooks and monitor data drift with diff tooling and alerts.
How would you implement a feature toggle system in a high-performance
backend?
Use a centralized toggle service with in-memory caching at service startup.
Support multi-level evaluation (global, tenant, user-level toggles).
Push toggle updates via pub/sub to avoid polling and ensure consistency.
Design for toggle rollout, rollback, and expiration with audit logging.
Integrate toggle state with CI/CD pipelines for controlled releases.
What is your approach to designing APIs that evolve over time without
breaking clients?
Use additive-only changes: never remove fields, only add optional ones.
Support versioning via URI paths (e.g., /v1/) or media-type negotiation.
Track usage metrics per API version to understand deprecation windows.
Use contract testing to ensure backward compatibility before deployment.
Communicate changes early with clear changelogs and sunset timelines.
How would you optimize cold-start latency in a serverless or scale-to-zero
architecture?
Warm up function containers periodically to avoid full cold boot cost.
Use provisioned concurrency or pre-warmed pools in platforms like AWS Lambda.
Reduce function dependencies, minimize package size, and lazy-load only when needed.
Use edge caching for frequently accessed resources or static data.
Route latency-sensitive requests to always-on instances when possible.
