Code Room
System designHardsd-g716
Subject CdnLevel Senior–Staff~45 minCommon in Storage & CDN interviewsIndustries Technology

Question

Design a content-delivery edge cache hierarchy for a global service serving static assets and large media: hundreds of edge POPs near users, a smaller tier of regional 'mid-tier' caches, and a small set of origins. Goal is a high offload ratio (most requests never reach origin), low latency, and the ability to purge content globally within seconds. How do you structure the cache tiers, route requests, and handle invalidation and origin protection?

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.