Design a File Storage Service
Last updated: August 4, 2025
Quick Overview
Design a multi-tenant file storage system that handles millions of requests. Discuss trade-offs in consistency, availability, and performance.
Anduril
August 4, 20250
4
2,741 solved
Design a multi-tenant file storage system that handles millions of requests. Discuss trade-offs in consistency, availability, and performance.
Anduril 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
- Design a complex system component applying multiple engineering principles
- Reason about system-level trade-offs: performance, reliability, developer experience
- Discuss advanced patterns: event sourcing, CQRS, distributed transactions
- Address cross-cutting concerns: observability, security, backward compatibility
- Demonstrate depth in both theoretical foundations and practical implementation
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?
- What testing strategy would you use for this component?
- How would you handle backward compatibility?
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Core Design Principles
In designing a multi-tenant file storage service, several core design principles are essential:
- SOLID Principles: Each component of the system should adhere to the SOLID principles, especially...
Architecture
The architecture of the file storage service will consist of several layers:
- API Gateway: Acts as a single point of entry for all client requests, handling authentication, rate limiting, and r...
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