Code Room
System designHardsd-g330
Subject CachingLevel Senior–Staff~45 minCommon in Databases & SQL · Distributed systems interviewsIndustries Technology

Question

Design geo-distributed caching for a social profile service with users and read replicas in 3 regions. A user in EU edits their profile (write goes to the EU primary, replicates async to US/APAC). The cache in each region serves reads. The problem: after the EU user updates their bio, their own next read (possibly routed anywhere) must show the new value (read-your-writes), and a cross-region cache must not serve the old bio indefinitely. Design the cache + replication interaction, how you provide read-your-writes for the author, and how you bound staleness for other regions' readers.

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
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Run or narrate your approach, then ask the coach.