Events, Queues & Rate Limiting

Design the asynchronous backbone that decouples services and manages traffic at internet scale

At-least-once vs exactly-once delivery Backpressure handling Token bucket algorithms Distributed coordination

Rate Limiter

Easy

Design distributed rate limiting with token bucket, sliding window algorithms, Redis-based counters, and hierarchical limits (per-user, per-API, global).

⏱ ~2.5h
Google Amazon Stripe

Messaging System

Hard

Design a Kafka-like distributed queue with partitioned logs, consumer groups, exactly-once semantics, and millions of messages/second throughput.

⏱ ~3.5h
Amazon Google LinkedIn

Distributed Counter

Easy

Design a counting system for likes/views handling billions of increments with eventual consistency, sharded counters, and HyperLogLog.

⏱ ~2.5h
Google Meta Twitter/X

Task Scheduler

Medium

Design distributed Cron with time-wheel algorithm, exactly-once execution, job dependencies, retry logic, and leader election.

⏱ ~3h
Amazon Google Airbnb

Webhook Service

Medium

Design reliable webhook delivery with exponential backoff, circuit breakers, HMAC signatures, dead letter queues, and at-least-once guarantees.

⏱ ~3h
Stripe GitHub Twilio