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Software Engineer Interview Questions
Practice 9403 coding, system design and machine learning questions from 546 companies, sorted by role, topic and interview round. Every question has step-by-step hints, a code runner that supports 8 languages and an AI mentor; members also get the full solution walkthrough.
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Showing 3901–3930 of 5874 results
- OpenAIHardSoftware EngineerDesign a CI/CD system with live log streaming
This question tests the ability to design a distributed job orchestration system that handles task dependencies, secure execution, and low-latency log streaming at scale.
System DesignTechnical ScreenDistributed SystemsCI/CDInfrastructure - OpenAIHardSoftware EngineerDesign a CI/CD system with stuck-job handling
This problem tests your ability to design a distributed job scheduling and orchestration system that handles process failures, network partitions, and job timeouts to ensure reliable execution in a high-scale environment.
System DesignOnsiteDistributed SystemsFault ToleranceCI/CD - OpenAIHardSoftware EngineerDesign a Chat Assistant Inference Service: Streaming, Free-Tier Limits, GPU Scheduling
Design the serving system for a chat assistant built on a large language model: stream replies token by token, rate-limit a free tier alongside paid users, schedule requests onto GPUs efficiently, and meet latency targets. It tests streaming protocols, batching, GPU memory limits, rate limiting and overload handling.
System DesignOnsite - OpenAIHardSoftware EngineerDesign a ChatGPT-like web chat UI
This problem evaluates your ability to design a performant, scalable front-end architecture for a real-time conversational AI interface, focusing on state management, streaming data handling, and network resilience.
System DesignTechnical ScreenFrontendArchitectureStreaming - OpenAIHardSoftware EngineerDesign a Cloud DevBox Platform
This question evaluates a candidate's ability to design scalable, secure cloud development platforms, testing competencies in distributed systems architecture, orchestration and scheduling, storage and persistence, multi-tenancy and RBAC, runtime isolation, and operational observability.
System DesignTechnical Screen - OpenAIMediumSoftware EngineerDesign a Cloud Development Environment
Design a secure, multi-tenant cloud development environment platform that provisions isolated compute instances, supports low-latency interactive editing, and reliably persists workspace state across disconnects.
System DesignTechnical ScreenDistributed SystemsCloud InfrastructureContainers & Virtualization - OpenAIMediumSoftware EngineerDesign a Cloud Development Environment Platform Like an Online IDE
Design a cloud development environment platform, like an online IDE, where developers open a repository in a hosted workspace with a browser editor, a terminal and forwarded ports, then stop and resume it later. It tests sandbox isolation, workspace storage, fast startup, secure connectivity and cost control.
System DesignTechnical Screen - OpenAIHardSoftware EngineerDesign a Cloud IDE That Edits and Runs Code in Browser-Accessible Workspaces
Design a cloud IDE in which developers edit and run code and use a terminal in the browser while their files and execution environments live on remote servers. It tests workspace lifecycle and cold starts, isolation of untrusted code, durable file storage, real-time editor and terminal channels, host scheduling, and failure handling at scale.
System DesignOnsite - OpenAIMediumSoftware EngineerDesign a Cloud IDE With SSH Access Where One or More Users Share a Host
A system design question about building a cloud IDE in which developers get SSH access to remote development hosts, and a host can be used by one person or shared by several. It tests host lifecycle management, connection routing through a gateway, workspace persistence, multi-user access control and isolation.
System DesignTechnical Screen - OpenAIMediumSoftware EngineerDesign a Content-Addressed Photo Storage Service
Design a scalable, content-addressed photo storage service with cryptographic verification, resumable chunked uploads, reference-counted deduplication, and protections against unauthorized hash-probing attacks.
System DesignTechnical ScreenObject StorageDeduplicationDistributed Systems - OpenAIMediumSoftware EngineerDesign a Conversational AI Assistant
This question tests the ability to design a low-latency, scalable architecture for an LLM-based conversational assistant capable of handling concurrent user requests and streaming responses.
System DesignTechnical ScreenLLMScalabilityStreaming - OpenAIHardSoftware EngineerDesign a Devbox Service for On-Demand Remote Development Environments
System design question asking you to design a devbox service that gives engineers on-demand remote development environments. It tests scoping requirements before architecture, the devbox lifecycle, fast provisioning, persistent workspaces, idle cost control, isolation, connectivity and failure recovery.
System DesignTechnical Screen - OpenAIHardSoftware EngineerDesign a Digital Game Distribution Platform
Design a high-scale game distribution platform covering reliable payment and entitlement tracking, content-addressed binary chunk distribution, offline license leasing, and canary rollouts.
System DesignTechnical Screensystem-designdistributed-systemscdn - OpenAIMediumSoftware EngineerDesign a Digital Game Store and Distribution Platform Like Steam
A system design interview question asking you to design a digital game store and distribution platform like Steam, covering the catalog, purchases, player libraries, and game downloads and updates. It tests content delivery for very large builds, entitlement consistency with payments, and handling traffic spikes during sales and launches.
System DesignOnsite - OpenAIHardSoftware EngineerDesign a Distributed Crossword Solver
This problem tests your ability to design a distributed system capable of solving large-scale constraint satisfaction problems (crossword puzzles) by partitioning search spaces and managing state across workers.
System DesignOnsiteDistributed SystemsBacktrackingConstraint Satisfaction - OpenAIMediumSoftware EngineerDesign a Distributed Rate Limiter
Tests your ability to architect a scalable, low-latency distributed rate limiter capable of enforcing multi-dimensional limits (such as requests per minute and tokens per minute) across distributed services.
System DesignTechnical ScreenDistributed SystemsRate LimitingRedis - OpenAIMediumSoftware EngineerDesign a Fair-Queueing Image-Upscaling Service, One GPU per Job
Design the backend for a SaaS image-upscaling API where every job runs on exactly one accelerator and a scheduler must divide a shared fleet across many paying customers, testing job-store design, weighted scheduling by accelerator-time rather than job count, and recovery from worker, accelerator, and scheduler failures.
System DesignOnsitesystem-designschedulingfair-queueing - OpenAIMediumSoftware EngineerDesign a Fault-Tolerant Online Chess Service
This problem tests your ability to design a stateful, fault-tolerant system where move ordering, clock synchronization, and session persistence are critical for game integrity.
System DesignTechnical ScreenDistributed SystemsWebSocketsEvent Sourcing - OpenAIHardSoftware EngineerDesign a Fault-Tolerant Video Generation Platform
This question tests the ability to design a distributed, asynchronous system capable of handling long-running, resource-intensive tasks while ensuring idempotency and fault tolerance in the event of partial component failure.
System DesignTechnical ScreenDistributed SystemsFault ToleranceAsynchronous Processing - OpenAIMediumSoftware EngineerDesign a Fleet Metrics Monitoring Platform, Then Go Deep
Sketch an end-to-end metrics pipeline for a large service fleet, then choose one or two components — cardinality control, storage layout, or alert evaluation — and design them in real depth.
System DesignTechnical Screensystem-designobservabilitytime-series - OpenAIHardSoftware EngineerDesign a GPT chat UI with snapshots and sharing
This question evaluates system-design and engineering competencies for building a multi-tenant LLM chat web application, covering real-time token streaming, snapshot/versioned data modeling, full-text and metadata search, API and schema design, role-based sharing, security, and frontend state management.
System DesignTechnical Screen - OpenAIHardSoftware EngineerDesign a High-Throughput Payment Authorization and Settlement System
This problem tests the ability to design a high-throughput, fault-tolerant distributed system that bridges external payment processors with internal ledger state management.
System DesignOnsiteDistributed SystemsConsistencyPayments - OpenAIMediumSoftware EngineerDesign a Highly Available Conversational AI Service
Start with a minimal stateless conversational AI endpoint that streams responses, then evolve it for scale and resilience. Cover safety and authorization, cancellation, admission control, backpressure, dependency failures, regional isolation, durable history, and metrics that separate serving issues from model issues.
System DesignOnsite - OpenAIMediumSoftware EngineerDesign a Hosted Notebook Platform
This question tests the ability to design a scalable, low-latency infrastructure for hosted interactive notebooks, focusing on container orchestration, state persistence, and session management.
System DesignTechnical ScreenDistributed SystemsContainersOrchestration - OpenAIHardSoftware EngineerDesign a Large-Scale Streaming AI Product Feature
Design an end-to-end streaming architecture for an AI product feature serving millions of concurrent users. The focus is on low-latency token streaming, connection lifecycle management, data persistence, and graceful failure recovery.
System DesignOnsiteStreaming APIsDistributed SystemsLLM Infrastructure - OpenAIMediumSoftware EngineerDesign a Live Elimination Puzzle Arena With Spectators
Design a real-time game in which up to ~150 players per arena solve timed puzzle rounds, the wrong and slowest are knocked out each round, and large audiences watch live standings. Tests partitioning by arena, authoritative timing, mid-round failover, and isolating spectator fan-out from gameplay.
System DesignOnsitesystem-designreal-timewebsockets - OpenAIMediumSoftware EngineerDesign a Live Riddle Showdown With Round Eliminations and Spectators
Design the backend for a live multiplayer riddle showdown where wrong or slow answerers are eliminated each round and large audiences spectate in real time. Tests room sharding, authoritative round settlement, mid-round crash recovery, and isolating spectator traffic from gameplay.
System DesignOnsitesystem-designreal-timesharding - OpenAIHardSoftware EngineerDesign a Live Speed-Typing Arena With Mistake Lockouts
Design the backend for a multiplayer typing race where wrong keys lock a player out for 1.5 seconds. Covers authoritative match servers, the lockout mechanism, skill-based matchmaking, ratings and leaderboards, and compensating for network latency.
System DesignTechnical Screenreal-timewebsocketsmatchmaking - OpenAIHardSoftware EngineerDesign a Live Trivia Buzzer Arena with Wrong-Answer Lockouts
Design an online trivia game where 2 to 8 players race to buzz in and answer each question correctly, and a wrong answer locks that player out for one second. Tests authoritative server design for real-time input, lockout state, matchmaking, and fairness across differing network latencies.
System DesignTechnical Screensystem-designreal-timematchmaking - OpenAIMediumSoftware EngineerDesign a Multi-Tenant Online IDE
This question assesses the ability to architect a multi-tenant cloud IDE platform, focusing on secure runtime isolation, resource partitioning, and efficient state management for concurrent user environments.
System DesignTechnical ScreenMulti-tenancySandboxingDistributed Systems
OpenAI