Code Room
System designHardsd-p034
Subject Queues streamingLevel Senior–Staff~45 minCommon in Distributed systems interviewsIndustries Technology, Software development

Question

Design a 'trending now' system that surfaces the top-K most popular items (hashtags, searches) over a sliding time window, updated continuously.

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.