FAANG System Design Interview: What to Expect in 2026

"What's the system design interview like at Google?"

I get asked this constantly. And the answer is: it depends. Each FAANG company, Google, Meta, Amazon, Apple, Netflix (and increasingly Microsoft), has its own interview style, evaluation criteria, and question types.

After conducting 200+ system design interviews and coaching engineers who've landed offers at all these companies, I've mapped out exactly what each company looks for and how their interviews differ.

This guide breaks down the system design interview process at each FAANG company, with specific questions they ask, what they evaluate, and how to prepare.

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How FAANG System Design Interviews Differ

Before diving into each company, here's the overview:

Key insight: While the core skills are the same, each company emphasizes different aspects. Tailoring your approach makes a significant difference.

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Google System Design Interview

Google's system design interviews are known for being open-ended and technically deep. They want to see how you think, not just what you know.

Interview Structure

• Duration: 45-60 minutes
• Interviewers: 1-2 senior engineers
• Format: Whiteboard or virtual whiteboard
• Rounds: Usually 1 system design round for L4, 2 for L5+

What Google Evaluates

Google uses four main criteria for system design:

Common Google Questions

Based on interview data, these questions appear frequently:

Infrastructure-focused:

• Design Google Search
• Design Google Maps
• Design Google Drive
• Design YouTube
• Design Gmail

Conceptual:

• Design a distributed cache
• Design a web crawler
• Design a key-value store
• Design a rate limiter
• Design a distributed task scheduler

Google's Interview Style

What makes Google different:

1. Very open-ended: Google rarely gives specific constraints upfront. They want you to ask.

2. Theoretical depth: Expect follow-ups like "What if the data doesn't fit in memory?" or "How would this work across data centers?"

3. Correctness matters: Google cares about edge cases and failure modes. Don't hand-wave.

4. Scale is assumed: Even if not stated, assume Google-scale (billions of users).

Sample Google Interview Flow

Question: "Design a URL shortener."

Google-style expectations:

• Minutes 0-5: Ask about scale. Google interviewer expects you to push for massive scale (billions of URLs).

• Minutes 5-15: Discuss data storage, hashing strategies, collision handling. They'll ask about consistency guarantees.

• Minutes 15-30: Cover caching, global distribution, analytics. How do you handle 301 vs 302 redirects?

• Minutes 30-45: Deep dive on one area. "How would you ensure exactly-once analytics counting?" or "How do you handle hot keys?"

How to Prepare for Google

1. Master fundamentals: Consistent hashing, replication, sharding, consensus algorithms
2. Think globally: Multi-region, cross-data-center replication
3. Know Google's systems: Read about Spanner, BigTable, MapReduce, Borg
4. Practice open-ended questions: Get comfortable defining your own constraints

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Meta (Facebook) System Design Interview

Meta's interviews are more product-focused than Google's. They want to see that you can build features users actually need.

Interview Structure

• Duration: 35-45 minutes (shorter than Google)
• Interviewers: 1 engineer
• Format: Collaborative, whiteboard or shared doc
• Rounds: 1-2 system design rounds depending on level

What Meta Evaluates

Common Meta Questions

Meta questions often relate to their products:

Product-focused:

• Design Facebook News Feed
• Design Instagram Stories
• Design Facebook Messenger
• Design WhatsApp
• Design Facebook Live

General:

• Design a notification system
• Design a photo sharing service
• Design a chat system
• Design a recommendation system
• Design a content moderation system

Meta's Interview Style

What makes Meta different:

1. Product context: Questions are framed around real user problems. "Users are complaining that feed is slow..."

2. Iterative design: Start simple, then add features. Meta likes to see evolution.

3. Trade-off obsessed: Expect "Why not use X instead?" for every major decision.

4. Time pressure: 35-45 minutes means you need to move fast while being thorough.

Sample Meta Interview Flow

Question: "Design Instagram Stories."

Meta-style expectations:

• Minutes 0-3: Quick functional requirements. Assume interviewer gives you constraints faster than Google.

• Minutes 3-10: High-level architecture. Focus on the core flow first: create, view, expire.

• Minutes 10-25: Add complexity: real-time updates, viewers list, story ordering algorithm.

• Minutes 25-35: Trade-off discussion. "We chose pull vs push for story updates because..."

How to Prepare for Meta

1. Study Meta products: Understand how Feed, Stories, Messenger, and WhatsApp work
2. Practice speed: You have less time than Google, be concise
3. Lead with trade-offs: Every decision should come with alternatives considered
4. Think about product: "What does the user need?" not just "What's technically elegant?"

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Amazon System Design Interview

Amazon uniquely integrates leadership principles into system design interviews. Technical skill matters, but so does demonstrating you'll be a good Amazon leader.

Interview Structure

• Duration: 45-60 minutes
• Interviewers: 1-2 engineers (often includes a "bar raiser")
• Format: Mixed technical and leadership principle evaluation
• Rounds: 1-2 system design rounds

What Amazon Evaluates

Amazon Leadership Principles in System Design

These principles come up constantly:

Customer Obsession: Start with the customer need. "What problem are we solving for the customer?"

Ownership: Own the entire system. Don't say "the DBA team will handle that." You handle it.

Dive Deep: Be ready to go technical. "Walk me through exactly how this component handles failures."

Bias for Action: Don't over-analyze. Make decisions and justify them.

Frugality: Cost matters. AWS pricing awareness is a plus.

Common Amazon Questions

E-commerce focused:

• Design Amazon's product search
• Design the shopping cart
• Design the order processing system
• Design Amazon Prime Video
• Design Alexa

AWS-oriented:

• Design a distributed file storage (S3)
• Design a load balancer (ELB)
• Design a message queue (SQS)
• Design a CDN (CloudFront)
• Design a database service (RDS)

Amazon's Interview Style

What makes Amazon different:

1. Working backward: They want you to start from customer requirements and work backward to technology.

2. Leadership principles: Expect behavioral follow-ups. "Tell me about a time you had to make a similar trade-off."

3. AWS awareness: Knowing AWS services helps. You don't need to use them, but understanding what exists is valuable.

4. Cost consciousness: "How much would this cost to operate?" is a fair question.

Sample Amazon Interview Flow

Question: "Design a delivery tracking system."

Amazon-style expectations:

• Minutes 0-5: Start with customer. "What does the customer need to know? When do they need updates?"

• Minutes 5-20: Design with customer journey in mind. Order placed → picked → shipped → out for delivery → delivered.

• Minutes 20-40: Technical deep dive. Real-time updates, push notifications, location tracking. How do we handle millions of concurrent deliveries?

• Minutes 40-50: Cost and scaling discussion. How do we handle Prime Day scale?

How to Prepare for Amazon

1. Learn leadership principles: Understand all 16 and think about how they apply to system design
2. Study AWS services: Know what S3, DynamoDB, SQS, SNS, Lambda do at a high level
3. Think about cost: Be ready to estimate operational costs
4. Practice working backward: Start every answer with the customer need

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Apple System Design Interview

Apple's interviews focus on privacy, polish, and integration. They care about user experience at every level, including system design.

Interview Structure

• Duration: 45-60 minutes
• Interviewers: 1-2 senior engineers
• Format: Whiteboard, often more detailed than other FAANG
• Rounds: 1-2 system design rounds

What Apple Evaluates

Common Apple Questions

Product-focused:

• Design iCloud Photo Library
• Design iMessage
• Design Apple Maps
• Design Siri
• Design App Store search

Platform-focused:

• Design a push notification system
• Design a device syncing service
• Design an on-device ML inference system
• Design a privacy-preserving analytics system

Apple's Interview Style

What makes Apple different:

1. Privacy-first: Always consider: "What data do we actually need? Can we process on-device instead of server?"

2. Detail-oriented: Apple interviewers notice when you hand-wave. Be precise.

3. Cross-platform thinking: How does this work on iPhone, Mac, iPad, and Watch?

4. User experience focus: "What happens if the user has poor connectivity?"

Sample Apple Interview Flow

Question: "Design iCloud Photo Library."

Apple-style expectations:

• Minutes 0-5: Requirements with privacy focus. What do we sync? How do we handle end-to-end encryption?

• Minutes 5-20: Architecture with on-device vs cloud considerations. Thumbnails generated on device? Full-res stored where?

• Minutes 20-40: Deep dive on sync algorithm. Conflict resolution. Handling offline edits. Cross-device consistency.

• Minutes 40-50: Privacy deep dive. How do we enable features like search without compromising privacy? (On-device ML for indexing.)

How to Prepare for Apple

1. Study Apple's privacy approach: Differential privacy, on-device processing, end-to-end encryption
2. Understand the ecosystem: How iCloud, Keychain, and Handoff work
3. Think about edge cases: Poor connectivity, old devices, storage limitations
4. Read Apple's technical documentation: They publish detailed privacy white papers

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Netflix System Design Interview

Netflix interviews focus on scale, reliability, and cultural fit. They have a unique culture of freedom and responsibility.

Interview Structure

• Duration: 45-60 minutes
• Interviewers: 1-2 senior engineers
• Format: Conversational, less rigid structure
• Rounds: 1-2 system design rounds

What Netflix Evaluates

Common Netflix Questions

Streaming-focused:

• Design Netflix streaming service
• Design the recommendation system
• Design the video encoding pipeline
• Design the playback experience

Infrastructure:

• Design a CDN
• Design a chaos engineering platform
• Design a real-time analytics system
• Design a content delivery optimization system

Netflix's Interview Style

What makes Netflix different:

1. Chaos engineering mindset: Expect questions like "What happens when X fails?" Netflix invented Chaos Monkey.

2. Global scale: 200+ million subscribers across 190+ countries. Think global from the start.

3. Culture questions: They care about cultural fit. Be ready to discuss how you handle autonomy and responsibility.

4. Open source awareness: Netflix is prolific in open source. Knowing their tools (Zuul, Eureka, Hystrix) helps.

Sample Netflix Interview Flow

Question: "Design a video streaming service."

Netflix-style expectations:

• Minutes 0-5: Scale discussion. How many concurrent viewers? Global distribution? Quality levels?

• Minutes 5-20: Core architecture. CDN strategy, adaptive bitrate streaming, video encoding pipeline.

• Minutes 20-40: Reliability deep dive. What happens if a CDN node fails? How do you handle regional outages? Pre-positioning content.

• Minutes 40-50: Optimization. How do you reduce buffering? Predict what users will watch next?

How to Prepare for Netflix

1. Study Netflix tech blog: They publish extensively about their architecture
2. Understand CDNs deeply: Open Connect, edge caching, video delivery optimization
3. Learn about resilience patterns: Circuit breakers, bulkheads, fallbacks
4. Read about Netflix culture: The Netflix Culture Deck is famous for a reason

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Common Patterns Across All FAANG Companies

Despite differences, some patterns are universal:

What Every FAANG Company Wants

1. Requirements first: Always clarify before designing
2. Scale awareness: Understand the difference between 1K and 1B users
3. Trade-off reasoning: Explain why you chose A over B
4. Failure handling: Address what happens when things break
5. Communication: Think out loud, structure your presentation

The Universal Framework

This works at any FAANG company:

Questions You'll Get at Every FAANG Company

These come up everywhere:

• "How does this scale to 10x traffic?"
• "What happens if [component] fails?"
• "Why did you choose [technology A] over [technology B]?"
• "Walk me through the data flow."
• "What are the bottlenecks in this design?"

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Company-Specific Preparation Timeline

If You Have 4 Weeks

Week 1: Master fundamentals

• Distributed systems concepts
• Common components (databases, caches, queues)
• The universal framework

Week 2: General practice

• 5-6 classic problems (URL shortener, Twitter, etc.)
• Mock interviews

Week 3: Company-specific prep

• Study the target company's products
• Read their engineering blog
• Understand their tech stack

Week 4: Targeted practice

• Company-specific questions
• More mock interviews
• Review and refine

If You Have 2 Weeks

Days 1-7: Fundamentals + framework

• Cover core concepts quickly
• Practice 3-4 classic problems

Days 8-14: Company-specific

• Deep dive on target company
• 3-4 mock interviews
• Refine weak areas

If You Have 1 Week

Focus on:

1. The universal framework (memorize it)
2. 2-3 classic problems in depth
3. Company's engineering blog (key posts)
4. 2 mock interviews

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Level Expectations by Company

What's expected differs by level:

Senior Engineer (L5/E5)

Staff Engineer (L6/E6) and Above

Higher levels need to demonstrate:

• System evolution: How does this grow over 3-5 years?
• Team considerations: How many engineers to build? How to parallelize?
• Business alignment: How does this serve business goals?
• Technical leadership: What's the migration strategy from current state?

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Red Flags That Kill FAANG Offers

Based on interviewer feedback, these are instant red flags:

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The Winning Mindset

Across all FAANG companies, interviewers consistently say they want candidates who:

1. Think out loud: Let them see your reasoning
2. Stay collaborative: Treat it as a design discussion, not a test
3. Acknowledge uncertainty: "I'm not sure about X, but I'd approach it by..."
4. Ask good questions: The questions you ask reveal your experience level
5. Handle pushback gracefully: Interviewers push back to test your thinking

Remember: FAANG interviewers aren't trying to trick you. They're trying to see if you'd be a good colleague to design systems with.

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Summary: Quick Reference by Company

Each company has its own flavor, but the core skills transfer. Master the fundamentals, understand each company's priorities, and practice with company-specific questions.---

Frequently Asked Questions

Should I use company-specific technologies in my design?

For Amazon, knowing AWS services helps but isn't required. For others, use generic terms (load balancer, cache, database) unless you have deep experience with specific technologies.

How different are the questions between companies?

The core problems are similar (design Twitter, design a cache), but the evaluation emphasis differs. Google goes deeper on theory, Meta on product, Amazon on customer impact, Apple on privacy, Netflix on reliability.

Which FAANG company has the hardest system design interviews?

Google is often considered the most technically rigorous. Amazon can be challenging because of the leadership principle integration. Meta's shorter time makes pacing difficult. It depends on your strengths.

Do I need to know the company's tech stack?

It helps but isn't required. Understanding that Google uses Spanner or that Netflix uses AWS gives useful context, but you won't fail for not knowing specific internal tools.

Can I prepare for multiple FAANG companies at once?

Yes. 80% of preparation is universal (fundamentals, classic problems, communication). Spend 20% on company-specific tuning in the week before each interview.