LinkedIn — Interview Prep — Engineering Blog

4 design problems known to be asked at LinkedIn.

Medium2

Mediumhigh level design distributed systems databases

Database Replication: Copies That Disagree With Each Other

Why the same query returns different answers on two servers a second apart — and the failover, lag, and conflict traps that turn 'just add a read replica' into a 3am incident.

Asked at Amazon, Google, Meta +3

Aug 8, 2026·15 min read

Mediumhigh level design distributed systems messaging

Message Queues & Event Streaming: Stop Making Users Wait for Work They Don't Care About

A checkout that emails, bills, and updates inventory before it answers is one flaky partner away from a timeout. How queues and logs let producers and consumers stop holding each other hostage.

Asked at Amazon, LinkedIn, Netflix +3

Aug 8, 2026·17 min read

Hard2

Hardsystem design interview databases algorithms concurrency

Design a Key-Value Store

The capstone that ties the whole series together: consistent hashing to place data, quorums to tune consistency, vector clocks to detect conflicts, and hinted handoff to stay writable through failure. This is Amazon's Dynamo, rebuilt from its four moving parts.

Asked at Amazon, Netflix, Uber +2

Aug 9, 2026·23 min read

Hardsystem design interview distributed systems caching scalability

Design a News Feed

The Twitter/Instagram timeline, worked end to end. The whole system pivots on one decision — do you build a follower's feed when someone posts (push), or when they open the app (pull)? Toggle between them, watch the write and read cost flip, and see why one celebrity breaks the naive answer.

Asked at Meta, Twitter, Instagram +3

Aug 9, 2026·13 min read