High-throughput pub/sub system
Design a high-throughput pub/sub system for clickstream/telemetry: producers publish ~2M events/sec across thousands of topics, and many independent consumer groups (analytics, billing, ML feature pipelines) each read the full stream at their own pace without affecting one another. Requirements: a slow consumer must not slow down producers or other consumers, consumers can be added/removed and the load rebalances, and on consumer crash, processing resumes without dropping events. Walk through the design.
What a strong answer looks like
Clarify scale and constraints first. Propose a clean component breakdown, then go deep on the hard parts (data model, bottlenecks, consistency, failure modes) and name the trade-offs you are making.
Clarify5:00 left
Estimate5:00 planned
Design15:00 planned
Deep dive12:00 planned
Failure8:00 planned
Which questions mattered is sealed until you submit. Telling you now would just be handing over the edge cases.
Run or narrate your approach, then ask the coach.