Free PDF · 18 pages · October 2026
System Design Interview Cheat Sheet
The interview in seven stages, the numbers worth knowing by heart, and twelve classic systems on one page each, every line linked to the lesson it comes from.
What is inside
- The seven stages of a system design interview, and the ten points a scorecard grades
- Numbers every engineer should know: latency, throughput, uptime, estimates, cache TTLs
- Twelve classic systems on one page each: URL shortener, rate limiter, WhatsApp, Twitter, notifications, YouTube, Uber, Dropbox, typeahead, payments, web crawler, Ticketmaster
- Where to go next: the 30-day plan and the mock interview
Every number in this sheet is copied from a lesson on systemdesign.academy, and every lesson is linked, so you can check any line.
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