Architect a geo-distributed Ad Serving Engine
Last updated: July 9, 2025
Quick Overview
Design a geo-distributed ad serving system that handles millions of requests. Discuss trade-offs in consistency, availability, and performance.
Adobe
July 9, 20250
4
1,544 solved
Design a geo-distributed ad serving system that handles millions of requests. Discuss trade-offs in consistency, availability, and performance.
Adobe asks this during the System Design Round to assess your depth in software engineering. They want to see understanding of design patterns, system architecture, and the trade-offs involved in different technical approaches.
What the Interviewer Expects
- Explain the concept clearly with a practical example
- Discuss when and why to apply this principle
- Identify common mistakes and anti-patterns
- Compare with alternative approaches
Key Topics to Cover
How to Approach This
- Apply SOLID principles. Single Responsibility makes code testable, Open/Closed makes it extensible.
- Choose data structures based on access patterns, not familiarity.
- Prefer immutable data and message passing over shared mutable state for concurrency.
- Design APIs with RESTful conventions, versioning, meaningful errors, and pagination from day one.
Possible Follow-up Questions
- What testing strategy would you use for this component?
- How would this design change if the team size doubled?
- How would you measure the performance of this component in production?
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Core Design Principles
In designing a geo-distributed Ad Serving Engine, the primary design principles to consider are CAP Theorem, Separation of Concerns, and Statelessness.
- CAP Theorem: It states that...
Architecture
For Adobe's geo-distributed ad serving engine, I would propose a microservices architecture with the following components:
- API Gateway: Acts as a single entry point for ad requests. It handles...
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