Architect a multi-tenant Ad Serving Engine
Last updated: April 10, 2026
Quick Overview
Design a multi-tenant ad serving system that handles millions of requests. Discuss trade-offs in consistency, availability, and performance.
Spotify
April 10, 2026129
6
3,221 solved
Design a multi-tenant ad serving system that handles millions of requests. Discuss trade-offs in consistency, availability, and performance.
This fundamentals question from Spotify's Onsite tests whether you can reason about software design at a deep level. The interviewer expects discussion of maintainability, testability, and operational considerations.
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 are the security implications of this design?
- How would you document this for other engineers?
- How would you handle backward compatibility?
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Core Design Principles
In designing a multi-tenant ad serving engine, key design principles include Separation of Concerns and Single Responsibility Principle.
- Separation of Concerns: This principle ensures ...
Architecture
The architecture of the multi-tenant ad serving engine will follow a Microservices Architecture. Each service will handle specific responsibilities, such as Ad Management, User Targeting, and Repo...
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