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API Design System Design Case Studies

5 API Design case studies from TikTok with full breakdowns.

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Companies

Microsoft6OpenAI6Amazon5Atlassian5TikTok5Goldman Sachs4Snowflake4Anthropic3Roblox3Salesforce3Uber3Adobe2Apple2Bloomberg2Databricks2Google2JPMorgan2Meta2Oracle2Pinterest2Walmart2Airbnb1Anduril1Capital One1Flipkart1LinkedIn1Netflix1NVIDIA1

Topics

Distributed Systems 90Real-time 51Storage 43Data Pipelines 42API Design 41Databases 38Caching 37Security 32AI / ML 23Algorithms 20Scheduling 20Search 19Event Driven 14Fintech 14Payments 11Geospatial 11Analytics 11Observability 11E-commerce 11Messaging 10CDN 9Concurrency 8Ads 8Frontend 8Booking System 6Networking 5IoT 4Media 3Media Streaming 3Collaboration 3Rate Limiting 2
TikTok✕API Design✕Clear all
Access Control System (RBAC + Resource Permissions)
6 min readSecurityDatabasesAPI Design
Intermediate▶ Mock
Distributed Rate Limiter
8 min readRate LimitingDistributed SystemsAPI Design
Intermediate+9▶ Mock
Demand-Side Ad Platform: Campaigns, Targeting and Edit History
3 min readAdsDatabasesAPI Design
Intermediate▶ Mock
Governed Data Service for Downstream Consumers
3 min readAPI DesignData PipelinesSecurity
Intermediate▶ Mock
URL Shortener (TinyURL / bit.ly)
7 min readDistributed SystemsCachingStorage
Beginner+4▶ Mock

Frequently Asked Questions

What is API Design in system design?

API Design is a core system design topic covered in 41 case studies on InterviewSkool. It appears frequently in FAANG interviews, especially at Google, Amazon, and Meta.

How should I prepare API Design for system design interviews?

Study the case studies above, focusing on architecture trade-offs, scale estimates, and API designs. Practice explaining your decisions aloud — this is exactly what interviewers evaluate.

Practice with a Mock Interview

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