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Common Problems
Design a Code Judge Like LeetCode
Evan King
Ex-Meta Staff Engineer
medium 35 min
Practice This Problem
System Design Interview: Design LeetCode (Online Judge) w/ a Ex-Meta Staff…
Staff…
Understanding the Problem
🧑💻 What is LeetCode?
Let's be honest; LeetCode needs no introduction. You're probably spending many hours a day there
right now as you prepare. But, for the uninitiated, LeetCode is a platform that helps software
engineers prepare for coding interviews. It offers a vast collection of coding problems, ranging from
easy to hard, and provides a platform for users to answer questions and get feedback on their
solutions. They also run periodic coding competitions.
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Functional Requirements 50% off Hello Interview Premium 🎉
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Core Requirements
1. Users should be able to view a list of coding problems.
2. Users should be able to view a given problem, code a solution in multiple languages.
3. Users should be able to submit their solution and get instant feedback.
4. Users should be able to view a live leaderboard for competitions.
Below the line (out of scope):
User authentication
User profiles
Payment processing
User analytics
Social features
For the sake of this problem (and most system design problems for what it's worth), we can
assume that users are already authenticated and that we have their user ID stored in the
session or JWT.
Non-Functional Requirements
Core Requirements
1. The system should prioritize availability over consistency.
2. The system should support isolation and security when running user code.
3. The system should return submission results within 5 seconds.
4. The system should scale to support competitions with 100,000 users.
Below the line (out of scope):
The system should be fault-tolerant.
The system should provide secure transactions for purchases.
The system should be well-tested and easy to deploy (CI/CD pipelines).
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The system should have regular
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It's important to note that LeetCode only has a few hundred thousand users and roughly 4,000
problems. Relative to most system design interviews, this is a small-scale system. Keep this in
mind as it will have a significant impact on our design.
Here's how it might look on your whiteboard:
LeetCode Requirements
Adding features that are out of scope is a "nice to have". It shows product thinking and gives your
interviewer a chance to help you reprioritize based on what they want to see in the interview. That
said, it's very much a nice to have. If additional features are not coming to you quickly, don't waste
your time and move on.
The Set Up
Planning the Approach
Before you move on to designing the system, it's important to start by taking a moment to plan
your strategy. Fortunately, for these common user-facing product-style questions, the plan
should be straightforward: build your design up sequentially, going one by one through your
functional requirements. This will help you stay focused and ensure you don't get lost in the
weeds as you go. Once you've satisfied the functional requirements, you'll rely on your non-
functional requirements to guide you through the deep dives.
Defining the Core Entities
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I like to begin with a broad overview
50%ofoff
the primary
Hello Premium 🎉
Interviewentities. At this stage, it is not necessary to
know every specific column or detail. We will focus on the intricacies, such as columns Getand
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fields, later when we have a clearer grasp. Initially, establishing these key entities will guide our
thought process and lay a solid foundation as we progress towards defining the API.
To satisfy our key functional requirements, we'll need the following entities:
1. Problem: This entity will store the problem statement, test cases, and the expected
output.
2. Submission: This entity will store the user's code submission and the result of running
the code against the test cases.
3. Leaderboard: This entity will store the leaderboard for competitions.
In the actual interview, this can be as simple as a short list like this. Just make sure you talk
through the entities with your interviewer to ensure you are on the same page. You can add
User here too; many candidates do, but in general, I find this implied and not necessary to call
out.
Leetcode Entities
As you move onto the design, your objective is simple: create a system that meets all functional and
non-functional requirements. To do this, I recommend you start by satisfying the functional
requirements and then layer in the non-functional requirements afterward. This will help you stay
focused and ensure you don't get lost in the weeds as you go.
API or System Interface
When defining the API, we can usually just go one-by-one through our functional requirements
and make sure that we have (at least) one endpoint to satisfy each requirement. This is a good
way to ensure that we're not missing anything.
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Starting with viewing a list of problems,
50% offwe'll
Hello have a simple
Interview 🎉 endpoint that returns a list. I've
PremiumGET
added some basic pagination as well since we have far more problems than should Get be Premium
returned in a single request or rendered on a single page.
GET /problems?page=1&limit=100 -> Partial<Problem>[]
The Partial here is taken from TypeScript and indicates that we're only returning a subset of the
Problem entity. In reality, we only need the problem title, id, level, and maybe a tags or category
field but no need to return the entire problem statement or code stubs here. How you short hand
this is not important so long as you are clear with your interviewer.
Next, we'll need an endpoint to view a specific problem. This will be another GET endpoint that
takes a problem ID (which we got when a user clicked on a problem from the problem list) and
returns the full problem statement and code stub.
GET /problems/:id?language={language} -> Problem
We've added a query parameter for language which can default to any language, say python if
not provided. This will allow us to return the code stub in the user's preferred language.
Then, we'll need an endpoint to submit a solution to a problem. This will be a POST endpoint
that takes a problem ID and the user's code submission and returns the result of running the
code against the test cases.
POST /problems/:id/submit -> Submission
{
code: string,
language: string
}
- userId not passed into the API, we can assume the user is authenticated and the userId
Finally, we'll need an endpoint to view a live leaderboard for competitions. This will be a GET
endpoint that returns the ranked list of users based on their performance in the competition.
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GET /leaderboard/:competitionId?page=1&limit=100 -> Leaderboard
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Always consider the security implications of your API. I regularly see candidates passing in data like
userId or timestamps in the body or query parameters. This is a red flag as it shows a lack of
understanding of security best practices. Remember that you can't trust any data sent from the client
as it can be easily manipulated. User data should always be passed in the session or JWT, while
timestamps should be generated by the server.
High-Level Design
With our core entities and API defined, we can now move on to the high-level design. This is
where we'll start to think about how our system will be structured and how the different
components will interact with each other. Again, we can go one-by-one through our functional
requirements and make sure that we have a set of components or services to satisfy each API
endpoint. During the interview it's important to orient around each API endpoint, being explicit
about how data flows through the system and where state is stored/updated.
The majority of systems designed in interviews are best served with a microservices architecture, as
has been the case with the other problem breakdowns in this guide. However, this isn't always the
case. For smaller systems like this one, a monolithic architecture might be more appropriate. This is
because the system is small enough that it can be easily managed as a single codebase and the
overhead of managing multiple services isn't worth it. With that said, let's go with a simple client-
server architecture for this system.
1) Users should be able to view a list of coding problems
To view a list of problems, we'll need a simple server that can fetch a list of problems from the
database and return them to the user. This server will also be responsible for handling
pagination.
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Viewing a List of Problems
The core components here are:
1. API Server: This server will handle incoming requests from the client and return the
appropriate data. So far it only has a single endpoint, but we'll add the others as we go.
2. Database: This is where we'll store all of our problems. We'll need to make sure that
the database is indexed properly to support pagination. While either a SQL or NoSQL
database could work here, I'm going to choose a NoSQL DB like DynamoDB because we
don't need complex queries and I plan to nest the test cases as a subdocument in the
problem entity.
Our Problem schema would look something like this:
{
id: string,
title: string,
question: string,
level: string,
tags: string[],
codeStubs: {
python: string,
javascript: string,
typescript: string,
...
},
testCases: {
type: string,
input: string,
output: string
}[]
}
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The codeStubs for each language 50%
would either
off Hello needPremium
Interview 🎉
to be manually entered by an admin or, in
the modern day of LLMs, could be generated automatically given a single language example.
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2) Users should be able to view a given problem and code a solution
To view a problem, the client will make a request to the API server with GET /problems/:id
and the server will return the full problem statement and code stub after fetching it from the
database. We'll use a Monaco Editor to allow users to code their solution in the browser.
Viewing a Specific Problem
3) Users should be able to submit their solution and get instant feedback
Ok, it's been easy so far, but here is where things get interesting. When a user submits their
solution, we need to run their code against the test cases and return the result. This is where
we need to be careful about how we run the code to ensure that it doesn't crash our server or
compromise our system.
Let's breakdown some options for code execution:
Bad Solution: Run Code in the API Server
Approach
The simplest way to run the user submitted code is to run it directly in the API server. This
means saving the code to a file in our local filesystem, running it, and capturing the output.
This is a terrible idea, don't do it!
Challenges
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1. Security: Running user code50%onoffyour
Hello Interview
server isPremium 🎉 security risk. If a user
a massive
submits malicious code, they could potentially take down your server or Get Premium
compromise your system. Consider a user submitting code that deletes all of your
data or sends all of your data to a third party. They could also use your server to
mine cryptocurrency, launch DDoS attacks, or any number of other malicious
activities.
2. Performance: Running code is CPU intensive and can easily crash your server if
not properly managed, especially if the code is in an infinite loop or has a memory
leak.
3. Isolation: Running code in the same process as your API server means that if the
code crashes, it will take down your server with it and no other requests will be
able to be processed.
Good Solution: Run Code in a Virtual Machine (VM)
Approach
A better way to run user submitted code is to run it in a virtual machine (VM) on the
physical API Server. A VM is an isolated environment that runs on top of your server and
can be easily reset if something goes wrong. This means that even if the user's code
crashes the VM, it won't affect your server or other users.
Challenges
The main challenge with this approach is that VMs are resource intensive and can be slow
to start up. This means that you'll need to carefully manage your VMs to ensure that you're
not wasting resources and that you can quickly spin up new VMs as needed. Additionally,
you'll need to be careful about how you manage the lifecycle of your VMs to ensure that
you're not running out of resources or leaving VMs running when they're not needed
which can prove costly.
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Running User Code in a VM
Great Solution: Run Code in a Container (Docker)
Approach
A great (and arguably optimal) solution is to run user submitted code in a container.
Containers are similar to VMs in that they provide an isolated environment for running
code, but they are much more lightweight and faster to start up. Let's break down the key
differences between VMs and containers:
VMs: VMs run on physical hardware through a hypervisor (like VMware or Hyper-V). Each
VM includes a full copy of an operating system (OS), the application, necessary binaries,
and libraries, making them larger in size and slower to start. VMs are fully isolated, running
an entire OS stack, which adds overhead but provides strong isolation and security.
Containers: Containers, on the other hand, share the host system's kernel and isolate the
application processes from each other. They include the application and its dependencies
(libraries, binaries) but not a full OS, making them lightweight and enabling faster start
times. Containers offer less isolation than VMs but are more efficient in terms of resource
usage and scalability.
We would create a container for each runtime that we support (e.g. Python, JavaScript,
Java) that installs the necessary dependencies and runs the code in a sandboxed
environment. Rather than spinning up a new VM for each user submission, we can reuse
the same containers for multiple submissions, reducing resource usage and improving
performance.
Challenges
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Given that containers share the 50%
hostoffOS kernel,
Hello wePremium
Interview need to🎉 properly configure and secure
the containers to prevent users from breaking out of the container and accessing Get thePremium
host
system. We also need to enforce resource limits to prevent any single submission from
utilizing excessive system resources and affecting other users. More about these
optimizations in the deep dive below.
Run Code in Containers
Great Solution: Run Code in a Serverless Function
Approach
Another great option is to run user submitted code in a serverless function. Serverless
functions are small, stateless, event-driven functions that run in response to triggers (e.g.
an HTTP request). They are managed by a cloud provider and automatically scale up or
down based on demand, making them a great option for running code that is CPU
intensive or unpredictable in terms of load.
In this approach, we would create a serverless function for each runtime that we support
(e.g. Python, JavaScript, Java) that installs the necessary dependencies and runs the code in
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a sandboxed environment. When a user
50% submits
off Hello Interviewtheir 🎉 we would trigger the
code,
Premium
appropriate serverless function to run the code and return the result. Get Premium
Challenges
The main challenge with this approach is that serverless functions have a cold start time,
which can introduce latency for the first request to a function. Additionally, serverless
functions have resource limits that can impact the performance of long running or
resource intensive code. We would need to carefully manage these limits to ensure that
we're not running out of resources or hitting performance bottlenecks.
While Serverless (lambda) functions are a great option, I am going to proceed with the
container approach given I don't anticipate a significant variance in submission volume and I'd
like to avoid any cold start latency. So with our decision made, let's update our high-level
design to include a container service that will run the user's code and break down the flow of
data through the system.
Running User Code in a Container
When a user makes a submission, our system will:
1. The API Server will recieve the user's code submission and problem ID and send it to
the appropriate container for the language specified.
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50%user's
2. The isolated container runs the off Hellocode
Interview
in aPremium 🎉 environment and returns
sandboxed
the result to the API server. Get Premium
3. The API Server will then store the submission results in the database and return the
results to the client.
4) Users should be able to view a live leaderboard for competitions
First, we should define a competition. We will define them as:
90 minutes long
10 problems
Up to 100k users
Scoring is the number of problems solved in the 90 minutes. In case of tie, we'll rank by
the time it took to complete all 10 problems (starting from competition start time).
The easiest thing we can do when users request the leaderboard via
/leaderboard/:competitionId is to query the submission table for all items/rows with the
competitionId and then group by userId , ordering by the number of successful
submissions.
In a SQL database, this would be a query like:
SELECT userId, COUNT(*) as numSuccessfulSubmissions
FROM submissions
WHERE competitionId = :competitionId AND passed = true
GROUP BY userId
ORDER BY numSuccessfulSubmissions DESC
In a NoSQL DB like DynamoDB, you'd need to have the partition key be the competitionId .
Then you'd pull all items into memory and group and sort.
Once we have the leaderboard, we'll pass it back to the client to display. In order to make sure
it's fresh, the client will need to request the leaderboard again after every ~5 seconds or so.
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Leaderboard
Tying it all together:
1. User requests the leaderboard via /leaderboard/:competitionId
2. The API server initiates a query to the submission table in our database to get all
successful submissions for the competition.
3. Whether via the query itself, or in memory, we'll create the leaderboard by ranking
users by the number of successful submissions.
4. Return the leaderboard to the client.
5. The client will request the leaderboard again after 5 seconds so ensure it is up to date.
Astute readers will realize this solution isn't very good as it will put a significant load on the database.
We'll optimize this in a deep dive.
Potential Deep Dives
With the core functional requirements met, it's time to delve into the non-functional
requirements through deep dives. Here are the key areas I like to cover for this question.
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The extent to which a candidate should proactively lead the deep dives is determined by their
seniority. For instance, in a mid-level interview, it is entirely reasonable for the interviewer Get Premium
to lead
most of the deep dives. However, in senior and staff+ interviews, the expected level of initiative and
responsibility from the candidate rises. They ought to proactively anticipate challenges and identify
potential issues with their design, while suggesting solutions to resolve them.
1) How will the system support isolation and security when running user code?
By running our code in an isolated container, we've already taken a big step towards ensuring
security and isolation. But there are a few things we'll want to include in our container setup to
further enhance security:
1. Read Only Filesystem: To prevent users from writing to the filesystem, we can mount
the code directory as read-only and write any output to a temporary directory that is
deleted a short time after completion.
2. CPU and Memory Bounds: To prevent users from consuming excessive resources, we
can set CPU and memory limits on the container. If these limits are exceeded, the
container will be killed, preventing resource exhaustion.
3. Explicit Timeout: To prevent users from running infinite loops, we can wrap the user's
code in a timeout that kills the process if it runs for longer than a predefined time limit,
say 5 seconds. This will also help us meet our requirement of returning submission
results within 5 seconds.
4. Limit Network Access: To prevent users from making network requests, we can
disable network access in the container, ensuring that users can't make any external
calls. If working within the AWS ecosystem, we can use Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)
Security Groups and NACLs to restrict all outbound and inbound traffic except for
predefined, essential connections.
5. No System Calls (Seccomp): We don't want users to be able to make system calls that
could compromise the host system. We can use seccomp to restrict the system calls
that the container can make.
Note that in an interview you're likely not expected to go into a ton of detail on how you'd implement
each of these security measures. Instead, focus on the high-level concepts and how they would help
to secure the system. If your interviewer is interested in a particular area, they'll ask you to dive
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deeper. To be concrete, this means 50%
just off
saying,
Hello "We'd use
Interview docker🎉containers while limiting network
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access, setting CPU and memory bounds, and enforcing a timeout on the code execution" is likely
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sufficient.
Security
2) How would you make fetching the leaderboard more efficient?
As we mentioned during our high-level design, our current approach is not going to cut it for
fetching the leaderboard, it's far too inefficient. Let's take a look at some other options:
Bad Solution: Polling with Database Queries
Good Solution: Caching with Periodic Updates
Great Solution: Redis Sorted Set with Periodic Polling
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Redis Sorted Set with Periodic Polling
Many candidates that I ask this question of propose a Websocket connection for realtime updates.
While this isn't necessarily wrong, they would be overkill for our system given the modest number of
users and the acceptable 5-second delay. The Redis Sorted Set with Periodic Polling solution strikes a
good balance between real-time updates and system simplicity. It's more than adequate for our
needs and can be easily scaled up if required in the future.
If we find that the 5-second interval is too frequent, we can easily adjust it. We could even implement
a progressive polling strategy where we poll more frequently (e.g., every 2 seconds) during the last
few minutes of a competition and less frequently (e.g., every 10 seconds) at other times.
Staff candidates in particular are effective at striking these balances. They articulate that they know
what the more complex solution is, but they are clear about why it's likely overkill for the given
system.
3) How would the system scale to support competitions with 100,000 users?
The main concern here is that we get a sudden spike in traffic, say from a competition or a
popular problem, that could overwhelm the containers running the user code. The reality is
that 100k is still not a lot of users, and our API server, via horizontal scaling, should be able to
handle this load without any issues. However, given code execution is CPU intensive, we need
to be careful about how we manage the containers.
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Bad Solution: Vertical Scaling
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Great Solution: Dynamic Horizontal Scaling
Approach
We can horizontally scale each of the language specific containers to handle more
submissions. This means that we can spin up multiple containers for each language and
distribute submissions across them. This can be dynamically managed through auto-
scaling groups that automatically adjust the number of active instances in response to
current traffic demands, CPU utilization, or other memory metrics. In the case of AWS, we
can use ECS to manage our containers and ECS Auto Scaling to automatically adjust the
number of containers based on demand.
Challenges
The only considerable downside here is the risk of over-provisioning. If we spin up too
many containers, we could end up wasting resources and incurring unnecessary costs.
That said, modern cloud providers make it easy to scale up and down based on demand,
so this is a manageable risk.
Great Solution: Horizontal Scaling w/ Queue
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Scaling with Queue
While the addition of the queue is likely overkill from a volume perspective, I would still opt for
this approach with my main justification being that it also enables retries in the event of a
container failure. This is a nice to have feature that could be useful in the event of a container
crash or other issue that prevents the code from running successfully. We'd simply requeue the
submission and try again. Also, having that buffer could help you sleep at night knowing you're
not going to lose any submissions, even in the event of a sudden spike in traffic (which I would
not anticipate happening in this system).
There is no right or wrong answer here, weighing the pros and cons of each approach is really
the key in the interview.
4) How would the system handle running test cases?
One follow up question I like to ask is, "How would you actually do this? How would you take
test cases and run them against user code of any language?" This breaks candidates out of
"box drawing mode" and forces them to think about the actual implementation of their design.
You definetely don't want to have to write a set of test cases for each problem in each
language. That would be a nightmare to maintain. Instead, you'd write a single set of test cases
per problem which can be run against any language.
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To do this, you'll need a standard way to Hello
50% off serialize thePremium
Interview 🎉 output of each test case and a
input and
test harness for each language which can deserialize these inputs, pass them to theGet user's
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code, and compare the output to the deserialized expected output.
For example, lets consider a simple question that asks the maximum depth of a binary tree.
Using Python as our example, we can see that the function itself takes in a TreeNode object.
# Definition for a binary tree node.
# class TreeNode(object):
# def __init__(self, val=0, left=None, right=None):
# self.val = val
# self.left = left
# self.right = right
class Solution(object):
def maxDepth(self, root):
"""
:type root: TreeNode
:rtype: int
"""
To actually run this code, we would need to have a TreeNode file that exists in the same
directory as the user's code in the container. We would take the standardized, serialized input
for the test case, deserialize it into a TreeNode object, and pass it to the user's code. The test
case could look something like:
{
"id": 1,
"title": "Max Depth of Binary Tree",
...
"testCases": [
{
"type": "tree",
"input": [3,9,20,null,null,15,7],
"output": 3
},
{
"type": "tree",
"input": [1,null,2],
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]
}
For a Tree object, we've decided to serialize it into an array using inorder traversal. Each
language will have it's own version of a TreeNode class that can deserialize this array into a
TreeNode object to pass to the user's code.
We'd need to define the serialization strategy for each data structure and ensure that the test
harness for each language can deserialize the input and compare the output to the expected
output.
Final Design
Putting it all together, one final design could look like this:
Final LeetCode Design
What is Expected at Each Level?
You may be thinking, “how much of that is actually required from me in an interview?” Let’s
break it down.
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Breadth vs. Depth: A mid-level candidate will be mostly focused on breadth (80% vsGet20%).
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You
should be able to craft a high-level design that meets the functional requirements you've
defined, but many of the components will be abstractions with which you only have surface-
level familiarity.
Probing the Basics: Your interviewer will spend some time probing the basics to confirm that
you know what each component in your system does. For example, if you add an API Gateway,
expect that they may ask you what it does and how it works (at a high level). In short, the
interviewer is not taking anything for granted with respect to your knowledge.
Mixture of Driving and Taking the Backseat: You should drive the early stages of the
interview in particular, but the interviewer doesn’t expect that you are able to proactively
recognize problems in your design with high precision. Because of this, it’s reasonable that they
will take over and drive the later stages of the interview while probing your design.
The Bar for LeetCode: For this question, an IC4 candidate will have clearly defined the API
endpoints and data model, landed on a high-level design that is functional and meets the
requirements. They would have understood the need for security and isolation when running
user code and ideally proposed either a container, VM, or serverless function approach.
Senior
Depth of Expertise: As a senior candidate, expectations shift towards more in-depth
knowledge — about 60% breadth and 40% depth. This means you should be able to go into
technical details in areas where you have hands-on experience. It's crucial that you
demonstrate a deep understanding of key concepts and technologies relevant to the task at
hand.
Articulating Architectural Decisions: You should be able to clearly articulate the pros and
cons of different architectural choices, especially how they impact scalability, performance, and
maintainability. You justify your decisions and explain the trade-offs involved in your design
choices.
Problem-Solving and Proactivity: You should demonstrate strong problem-solving skills and a
proactive approach. This includes anticipating potential challenges in your designs and
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suggesting improvements. You need
50%to
offbe adept
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at identifying
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optimizing performance, and ensuring system reliability. Get Premium
The Bar for LeetCode: For this question, IC5 candidates are expected to speed through the
initial high level design so you can spend time discussing, in detail, how you would run user
code in a secure and isolated manner. You should be able to discuss the pros and cons of
running code in a container vs a VM vs a serverless function and be able to justify your choice.
You should also be able to break out of box drawing mode and discuss how you would actually
run test cases against user code.
Staff+
I don't typically ask this question of staff+ candidates given it is on the easier side. That said, if I
did, I would expect that they would be able to drive the entire conversation, proactively
identifying potential issues with the design and proposing solutions to address them. They
should be able to discuss the trade-offs between different approaches and justify their
decisions. They should also be able to discuss how they would actually run test cases against
user code and how they would handle running code in a secure and isolated manner while
meeting the 5 second response time requirement. They would ideally design a very simple
system free of over engineering, but with a clear path to scale if needed.
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