•PRACTICE

System Design Case Studies Tracker

27 case studies from Microsoft 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
Microsoft✕Clear all
Google Drive
16 min readStorageCDNDistributed Systems
Advanced▶ Mock
Push Notification Service
17 min readReal-timeMessagingDistributed Systems
Advanced+5▶ Mock
Messenger App
9 min readReal-timeMessagingDistributed Systems
Advanced+5▶ Mock
Web Crawler
15 min readDistributed SystemsStorageSearch
Advanced+2▶ Mock
BookMyShow
9 min readDistributed SystemsPaymentsBooking System
Beginner▶ Mock
Ad Click and Impression Aggregator
6 min readAdsAnalyticsData Pipelines
Advanced+2▶ Mock
ChatGPT-Style Conversational AI Service
7 min readAI / MLReal-timeDistributed Systems
Advanced+2▶ Mock
Cloud Console Home Page (Backend-for-Frontend)
4 min readFrontendAPI DesignCaching
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
Centralized Logging System (ELK / Splunk)
6 min readObservabilityData PipelinesSearch
Intermediate+1▶ Mock
Distributed Rate Limiter
8 min readRate LimitingDistributed SystemsAPI Design
Intermediate+9▶ Mock
Sorting a 500 GB CSV with 16 GB of RAM (External Merge Sort)
4 min readAlgorithmsStorageData Pipelines
Intermediate▶ Mock
Incident Ticket Correlation Platform
3 min readObservabilityData PipelinesDistributed Systems
Advanced▶ Mock
IoT / Sensor Telemetry Pipeline
7 min readIoTData PipelinesStorage
Intermediate+1▶ Mock
REST APIs for JSON Document Storage
3 min readAPI DesignStorageDatabases
Beginner▶ Mock
Live Comments for Live Video (Facebook Live / TikTok Live)
6 min readReal-timeMessagingDistributed Systems
Intermediate▶ Mock
Metrics Monitoring and Alerting System
7 min readObservabilityData PipelinesStorage
Advanced+3▶ Mock
Online Chess Platform (chess.com)
6 min readReal-timeDistributed SystemsMessaging
Intermediate▶ Mock
E-commerce Product Catalog and Price Updates
6 min readE-commerceCachingDatabases
Intermediate▶ Mock
Recommendation System (Candidate Generation + Ranking)
6 min readAI / MLData PipelinesDistributed Systems
Advanced▶ Mock
Cloud Resource Change Tracking Database
3 min readDatabasesEvent DrivenStorage
Intermediate▶ Mock
Secure Multi-Tenant API for an Enterprise AI Copilot
4 min readAI / MLSecurityAPI Design
Advanced▶ Mock
To-Do List Service (REST API and Real-Time Shared Lists)
5 min readAPI DesignReal-timeCollaboration
Beginner▶ Mock
Top-K Trending Items (Heavy Hitters)
7 min readAnalyticsReal-timeAlgorithms
Advanced+4▶ Mock
Typeahead / Search Autocomplete
6 min readSearchCachingData Pipelines
Intermediate▶ Mock
URL Shortener (TinyURL / bit.ly)
7 min readDistributed SystemsCachingStorage
Beginner+4▶ 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.

Practice with a Mock Interview

Apply these case studies in a live system design mock interview with InterviewSkool's AI interviewer.

Start System Design Interview →