https://blog.rajpoot.dev/system-design/ Recent content in System Design on Manvendra Rajpoot https://blog.rajpoot.dev/img/personal/cover.png https://blog.rajpoot.dev/img/personal/cover.png Hugo en Manvendra Rajpoot https://blog.rajpoot.dev/system-design/design-image-cdn-2026/ Tue, 05 May 2026 08:40:00 +0530 https://blog.rajpoot.dev/system-design/design-image-cdn-2026/ Design an image CDN in 2026 — on-demand resize, format negotiation, cache hierarchy, and the patterns from Cloudinary / imgix-class systems. https://blog.rajpoot.dev/system-design/event-driven-architecture-2026/ Tue, 05 May 2026 08:20:00 +0530 https://blog.rajpoot.dev/system-design/event-driven-architecture-2026/ Event-driven architecture in 2026 — Kafka / NATS / Postgres outbox, when EDA wins, and the operational tax of async-everywhere. https://blog.rajpoot.dev/system-design/system-design-interview-2026/ Mon, 04 May 2026 07:20:00 +0530 https://blog.rajpoot.dev/system-design/system-design-interview-2026/ System design interview approach in 2026 — framework, common pitfalls, AI-era patterns, and how to actually impress senior interviewers. https://blog.rajpoot.dev/system-design/design-rate-limited-api-2026/ Mon, 04 May 2026 07:10:00 +0530 https://blog.rajpoot.dev/system-design/design-rate-limited-api-2026/ Designing API rate limits that customers don't hate — tier design, headers, error responses, fairness, and the patterns from real public APIs. https://blog.rajpoot.dev/system-design/design-feed-system-2026/ Sun, 03 May 2026 07:40:00 +0530 https://blog.rajpoot.dev/system-design/design-feed-system-2026/ Design a feed system in 2026 — pull vs push fanout, ranking, freshness, and the architectures from Twitter / Instagram / TikTok-class systems. https://blog.rajpoot.dev/system-design/design-chat-system-2026/ Sun, 03 May 2026 07:30:00 +0530 https://blog.rajpoot.dev/system-design/design-chat-system-2026/ Design a chat system in 2026 — message storage, fanout, presence, push notifications, and patterns from real chat at scale. https://blog.rajpoot.dev/system-design/design-search-system-2026/ Sat, 02 May 2026 11:40:00 +0530 https://blog.rajpoot.dev/system-design/design-search-system-2026/ Design a search system in 2026 — Postgres FTS, Elasticsearch, vector search, hybrid retrieval, and the patterns from real production search. https://blog.rajpoot.dev/system-design/design-payment-system-2026/ Sat, 02 May 2026 10:00:00 +0530 https://blog.rajpoot.dev/system-design/design-payment-system-2026/ Design a payment system in 2026 — Stripe integration, idempotency, reconciliation, ledger design, and the patterns from real fintech. https://blog.rajpoot.dev/system-design/design-url-shortener-2026/ Sat, 02 May 2026 08:30:00 +0530 https://blog.rajpoot.dev/system-design/design-url-shortener-2026/ Design a URL shortener at every scale in 2026 — base62 encoding, key generation, caching, analytics, and the patterns from real shorteners. https://blog.rajpoot.dev/system-design/design-rate-limiter-2026/ Sat, 02 May 2026 08:20:00 +0530 https://blog.rajpoot.dev/system-design/design-rate-limiter-2026/ Design a rate limiter from first principles in 2026 — token bucket, sliding window, distributed Redis-backed limiter, and the patterns from real systems. https://blog.rajpoot.dev/system-design/design-distributed-counter-2026/ Fri, 01 May 2026 05:50:00 +0530 https://blog.rajpoot.dev/system-design/design-distributed-counter-2026/ How to design a distributed counter — naive Postgres, Redis sharding, async aggregation, and the patterns from real high-volume systems. https://blog.rajpoot.dev/system-design/design-content-moderation-2026/ Fri, 01 May 2026 05:20:00 +0530 https://blog.rajpoot.dev/system-design/design-content-moderation-2026/ How to design a content moderation system in 2026 — automated rules, LLM classification, human review, appeals, and the patterns that scale. https://blog.rajpoot.dev/system-design/design-multi-region-saas-2026/ Fri, 01 May 2026 04:40:00 +0530 https://blog.rajpoot.dev/system-design/design-multi-region-saas-2026/ How to design a multi-region SaaS in 2026 — data residency, replication, latency, deploys, and the patterns from real distributed teams. https://blog.rajpoot.dev/system-design/design-discord-voice-2026/ Fri, 01 May 2026 03:30:00 +0530 https://blog.rajpoot.dev/system-design/design-discord-voice-2026/ How to design a Discord-style voice chat system — SFU, WebRTC, presence, and the architecture that scales to millions of concurrent voice connections. https://blog.rajpoot.dev/system-design/design-real-time-bidding-2026/ Fri, 01 May 2026 01:40:00 +0530 https://blog.rajpoot.dev/system-design/design-real-time-bidding-2026/ How to design a real-time bidding (RTB) system — sub-100ms latency, fraud rails, billing, and the architecture from real ad platforms. https://blog.rajpoot.dev/system-design/design-distributed-locks-2026/ Fri, 01 May 2026 01:00:00 +0530 https://blog.rajpoot.dev/system-design/design-distributed-locks-2026/ How to do distributed locks correctly in 2026 — Redlock, Redis SET NX, Postgres advisory locks, ZooKeeper / etcd, and the gotchas that bite. https://blog.rajpoot.dev/system-design/design-cdn-edge-2026/ Thu, 30 Apr 2026 23:40:00 +0530 https://blog.rajpoot.dev/system-design/design-cdn-edge-2026/ How to design a CDN — anycast, cache hierarchies, origin shielding, and the patterns from real CDN deployments. https://blog.rajpoot.dev/system-design/design-newsletter-email-system-2026/ Thu, 30 Apr 2026 23:10:00 +0530 https://blog.rajpoot.dev/system-design/design-newsletter-email-system-2026/ How to design a newsletter / bulk-email system at scale — sender reputation, bounce handling, suppression, throttling, and the operational realities. https://blog.rajpoot.dev/system-design/design-distributed-cache-2026/ Thu, 30 Apr 2026 22:20:00 +0530 https://blog.rajpoot.dev/system-design/design-distributed-cache-2026/ How to design a distributed cache in 2026 — consistent hashing, replication, eviction, and the tradeoffs from real cache deployments. https://blog.rajpoot.dev/system-design/design-leaderboard-counters-2026/ Thu, 30 Apr 2026 21:30:00 +0530 https://blog.rajpoot.dev/system-design/design-leaderboard-counters-2026/ How to design a leaderboard / live counter system at scale — Redis sorted sets, sharded counters, eventual consistency, and the patterns from real products. https://blog.rajpoot.dev/system-design/design-google-docs-collaborative-editing-2026/ Thu, 30 Apr 2026 20:30:00 +0530 https://blog.rajpoot.dev/system-design/design-google-docs-collaborative-editing-2026/ How to design a collaborative editor like Google Docs — OT vs CRDTs, presence, persistence, and the patterns from production real-time editors. https://blog.rajpoot.dev/system-design/design-instagram-photo-sharing-2026/ Thu, 30 Apr 2026 19:50:00 +0530 https://blog.rajpoot.dev/system-design/design-instagram-photo-sharing-2026/ End-to-end system design for an Instagram-style photo-sharing app — uploads, image processing, feeds, follows, and the patterns at scale. https://blog.rajpoot.dev/system-design/design-rate-limiter-distributed-2026/ Thu, 30 Apr 2026 18:20:00 +0530 https://blog.rajpoot.dev/system-design/design-rate-limiter-distributed-2026/ How to scale a rate limiter beyond single-Redis in 2026 — sharded counters, local-then-global hybrid, sliding-window approximations, and the patterns at billion-request scale. https://blog.rajpoot.dev/system-design/design-notification-system-2026/ Thu, 30 Apr 2026 17:30:00 +0530 https://blog.rajpoot.dev/system-design/design-notification-system-2026/ Design a notification system that scales — email, push, SMS, in-app, with templates, batching, preferences, and the operational realities. https://blog.rajpoot.dev/system-design/design-payment-system-stripe-2026/ Thu, 30 Apr 2026 17:20:00 +0530 https://blog.rajpoot.dev/system-design/design-payment-system-stripe-2026/ How to design a payment system in 2026 — idempotency, double-entry ledger, reconciliation, webhook handling, PCI scope, and the patterns from real payment products. https://blog.rajpoot.dev/system-design/design-search-system-elasticsearch-2026/ Thu, 30 Apr 2026 17:10:00 +0530 https://blog.rajpoot.dev/system-design/design-search-system-elasticsearch-2026/ How to design a search system in 2026 — Elasticsearch / OpenSearch vs Postgres FTS vs Typesense, indexing pipelines, ranking, and the tradeoffs. https://blog.rajpoot.dev/system-design/design-distributed-task-queue-system/ Thu, 30 Apr 2026 10:40:00 +0530 https://blog.rajpoot.dev/system-design/design-distributed-task-queue-system/ How to design a distributed task queue from first principles — durability, ordering, retries, deduplication, fairness, dead-letter queues, and the storage choices that decide each. https://blog.rajpoot.dev/system-design/design-uber-location-dispatch-system/ Thu, 30 Apr 2026 10:30:00 +0530 https://blog.rajpoot.dev/system-design/design-uber-location-dispatch-system/ End-to-end system design for an Uber-style ride-hailing platform — geo-indexing, dispatch matching, ETAs, surge pricing, and the operational realities. https://blog.rajpoot.dev/system-design/design-youtube-video-streaming-system/ Thu, 30 Apr 2026 10:20:00 +0530 https://blog.rajpoot.dev/system-design/design-youtube-video-streaming-system/ End-to-end system design for a YouTube-style video streaming platform — upload, transcoding, storage, CDN, ABR, recommendations, and the tradeoffs. https://blog.rajpoot.dev/system-design/design-whatsapp-chat-system-design/ Wed, 29 Apr 2026 11:00:00 +0530 https://blog.rajpoot.dev/system-design/design-whatsapp-chat-system-design/ A complete system design for a WhatsApp-style chat — connections at scale, message storage, delivery receipts, group chat, presence, end-to-end encryption, and the tradeoffs. https://blog.rajpoot.dev/system-design/design-twitter-news-feed-system-design/ Wed, 29 Apr 2026 10:50:00 +0530 https://blog.rajpoot.dev/system-design/design-twitter-news-feed-system-design/ A complete system design for a Twitter-style news feed — fanout-on-write vs fanout-on-read, hybrid model, ranking, capacity, caching, and the tradeoffs interviewers care about. https://blog.rajpoot.dev/system-design/design-rate-limiter-system-design/ Tue, 28 Apr 2026 19:20:00 +0530 https://blog.rajpoot.dev/system-design/design-rate-limiter-system-design/ A complete system design for a distributed rate limiter — token bucket, leaky bucket, sliding window log, sliding window counter, and how to build them with Redis at scale. https://blog.rajpoot.dev/system-design/design-url-shortener-system-design/ Tue, 28 Apr 2026 19:10:00 +0530 https://blog.rajpoot.dev/system-design/design-url-shortener-system-design/ A senior-engineer's walkthrough of designing a URL shortener — requirements, capacity, ID generation strategies, schema, caching, analytics, and the tradeoffs interviewers care about. https://blog.rajpoot.dev/system-design/distributed-systems-fundamentals/ Tue, 28 Apr 2026 19:00:00 +0530 https://blog.rajpoot.dev/system-design/distributed-systems-fundamentals/ The mental model for distributed systems — partial failure, CAP, replication, partitioning, consistency models, time and ordering, and the tradeoffs that decide every architecture.