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System Design Case Studies Tracker

7 case studies from Airbnb with full breakdowns.

176case studies
30companies
31topics
~5 minaverage read

Companies

Meta28Microsoft27Amazon23OpenAI23Google20TikTok16Anthropic15Salesforce15Apple12Uber12Atlassian11JPMorgan11LinkedIn11Goldman Sachs9Netflix9Oracle9Snowflake9Rippling8Airbnb7Bloomberg7Capital One7Databricks7Walmart7Flipkart6NVIDIA6Pinterest6Roblox6Adobe4Visa4Anduril1

Topics

Distributed Systems 90Real-time 51Storage 43Data Pipelines 42API Design 41Databases 38Caching 37Security 32AI / ML 23Algorithms 20Scheduling 20Search 19Event Driven 14Fintech 14Analytics 11E-commerce 11Geospatial 11Observability 11Payments 11Messaging 10CDN 9Ads 8Concurrency 8Frontend 8Booking System 6Networking 5IoT 4Collaboration 3Media 3Media Streaming 3Rate Limiting 2
Airbnb✕Clear all
MakeMyTrip – Hotel Booking System
20 min readDistributed SystemsPaymentsBooking System
Beginner+3▶ Mock
Messenger App
9 min readReal-timeMessagingDistributed Systems
Advanced+5▶ Mock
A/B Testing (Experimentation) Platform
5 min readAnalyticsData PipelinesDistributed Systems
Intermediate▶ Mock
Distributed Job Scheduler (Cron at Scale)
7 min readSchedulingDistributed SystemsEvent Driven
Advanced+7▶ Mock
Distributed Key-Value Store (DynamoDB / Cassandra)
7 min readDatabasesDistributed SystemsStorage
Advanced+2▶ Mock
Fast Host Listings Metrics Page (Airbnb)
4 min readAnalyticsDatabasesCaching
Intermediate▶ Mock
User Activity Collection and Recent-Window Queries
5 min readAnalyticsData PipelinesStorage
Intermediate▶ Mock

Frequently Asked Questions

What are system design case studies?

System design case studies are real-world architecture problems broken down into structured breakdowns. Each case study covers requirements, high-level design, scale estimates, API designs, and deep dives into key components.

How many system design case studies should I prepare?

For FAANG interviews, preparing 15-20 case studies covering core topics like caching, load balancing, and database sharding is recommended. Focus on understanding trade-offs rather than memorizing solutions.

Which companies ask system design case studies?

All FAANG companies (Google, Amazon, Meta, Apple, Microsoft) plus top tech companies like Netflix, Uber, and Airbnb ask system design case studies. Senior-level interviews almost always include at least one system design round.

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