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Design overload protection with load shedding

TikTokSoftware Engineer · Technical Screen
HardSoftware EngineerTechnical ScreenSystem Design

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Design overload protection with load shedding evaluates requirements, scale assumptions, API/data design, architecture, trade-offs, failure modes, and rollout in a realistic interview setting. A strong answer states assumptions, handles edge cases, explains trade-offs, and shows how to validate the result clearly.

Design a high-traffic service that maintains p99 latency SLOs under sudden spikes. Describe admission control, token-bucket rate limiting, priority queues, deadlines, and timeouts. Compare load shedding strategies (drop-new, drop-tail, random, deadline-aware) and when to apply each at the load balancer versus the application. Explain circuit breakers, backpressure to clients and queues, protecting critical dependencies, and the metrics/alerts you would track to validate effectiveness.