System Design Interview Prep — Quick Reference Guide¶
Last-minute revision material for system design interviews. Each design includes a 4–5 step summary, cheat sheet, and interactive glossary of technical terms.
How to Use This Guide¶
For Each System Design:¶
- Read the summary (5–10 min) — covers all 4–5 steps of design thinking
- Scan the cheat sheet (2 min) — key decisions and trade-offs at a glance
- Look up terms — hover over Abbreviated Terms like ACID, PACT, Bloom Filter for quick definitions
Learning Paths¶
- Hard Interview coming in 2 hours? → Read the cheat sheet, review glossary terms
- Studying for a month? → Work through one design per day, take sparse notes on why each choice was made
- Deep dive mode? → Use the → [Deep Dive] links to understand the mechanics of each technology (coming soon)
Topic Difficulty Levels¶
Easy (Data Model + Basic Scaling)¶
- URL Shortening, Parking Lot, Weather System, Tagging Service, Pastebin
Medium (Concurrency + Multiple Features)¶
- Twitter, Social Media, Streaming, Task Scheduling, Rate Limiter, Cache
Hard (Consistency + Distributed Systems)¶
- Uber, Hotel Booking, Trading Platform, Payment System, Notification Service
Advanced (Infrastructure Scale)¶
- DNS, CDN, Blockchain, MapReduce, Kubernetes, Virtualization
Quick Navigation¶
Sample: Hotel Booking Service¶
✓ Step 1: Functional & Non-Functional Requirements
✓ Step 2: API Design, Data Model, High-Level Architecture
✓ Step 3: Improved Data Model, Concurrency, Consistency, Scalability
✓ Step 4: Persistence Layer, Caching, Search, Monitoring
✓ Cheat Sheet: 1-page reference
✓ Glossary: All terms explained
Generated: April 26, 2026 | Last Updated: Today
Goal: Every candidate should be able to explain ANY system design in 45 minutes after reviewing this material.