Code Room
System designMediumsd-g240
Subject IdentityLevel Mid–Senior~40 minCommon in Databases & SQL interviewsIndustries Technology, Software development

Question

Design a directory-sync service that keeps user and group data synchronized from thousands of customers' source-of-truth directories (Active Directory, Workday, Google Workspace) into your platform, where each customer may have hundreds of thousands of users, syncs run continuously, and a person joining/leaving/changing groups in the source must reflect on your side reliably and in order — without a transient sync error leaving access in a wrong state. Walk through the sync model (push vs pull, full vs incremental), how you keep it correct under partial failures, and the consistency model you expose.

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.

Narrate your design
Loading whiteboard…
Run or narrate your approach, then ask the coach.