Amazon System Design Interview: Social Media News Feed

The interviewer opens

Hi, and thanks for joining me today. Welcome to your interview for the SDE2 role at Amazon. We'll design a system together, and you can sketch on the whiteboard on the right of your screen as you talk. If you need to step out or take a break, the Pause button at the top right will pause the interview at any time.

The problem is a social media news feed at scale, and it's up in the Problem tab now. Please read through it and ask me anything you'd like clarified before you start designing.

The problem

Design a Facebook-like social media feed where millions of users post text, images and videos, see posts from people they follow in a feed, and like and view posts with live like and view counts.

Must do

• Users create posts containing text, images or videos
• Users view a feed of posts from accounts they follow
• Users like posts and their views are recorded
• Like and view counts on posts update in near real time

Must hold

• The feed renders almost instantly on login, even after the app cache was cleared
• Liking and viewing feel instant under massive concurrent traffic