High-Level Design rounds at Walmart lean toward large consumer- and retail-scale systems — video streaming, e-commerce platforms, and dynamic pricing — rather than generic templates. Interviewers reward a structured approach: requirements first, then storage and data model, then delivery and scaling trade-offs.
Problem 1Design a Video-Streaming Platform
Design a video-streaming platform comparable to a major consumer streaming service (Netflix/Hotstar-style) for a large audience. You won't be handed explicit QPS or user-count numbers up front — you're expected to reason about and size the storage and delivery needs yourself.
- Cover functional and non-functional requirements gathering before any architecture diagram.
- Cover a cloud storage strategy and a database design for catalog/metadata.
- Cover CDN usage for content delivery, and be ready to discuss the trade-off between storage cost, delivery latency, and consistency as the system scales up.