High-Level Design (system design) rounds at LinkedIn lean toward real internal-style problems — notification fan-out, key-value stores, ranking/aggregation pipelines — rather than pure "design Twitter" templates. Interviewers reward a structured approach: requirements first, then scale estimation, core entities, architecture, and a deep dive into one component.
Problem 1Design LinkedIn's Notification System
Design a system that delivers notifications (e.g. connection requests, post engagement, messages) to users at scale across push, email and in-app channels.
- Cover fan-out of a single event to potentially many recipients.
- Cover deduplication and batching so users aren't spammed by near-duplicate notifications.
- Cover read/unread state tracking across devices and channels.
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The full architecture, API design, data model and scaling discussion for these are part of the Placement-Ready PYQ Kit.
2 more system design prompts with a full architecture writeup in the full Placement-Ready PYQ Kit