Practice this list of System Engineer interview questions and answers verified by hiring managers and candidates.
Design a distributed file storage system like Google Drive.
Medium
Nov 23,2025
System Design
Google
Tell me about a time when you were faced with a tough deadline and how you managed it.
Medium
Dec 1,2024
Time Management
Amazon
Why do you want to work at OpenAI?
Easy
Oct,2024
Artificial Intelligence
Teamwork and Collaboration
OpenAI
What was some critical feedback you got from a teammate? How did you respond to it?
Medium
Dec 5, 2018
Communication Skills
Teamwork
Microsoft
What was the most difficult part of your last job?
Medium
Sep 5,2023
Job Challenges
Tesla
Tell me about a time when you had a conflict with a co-worker.
Hard
Sep 7,2024
Conflict Resolution
Meta
How would you optimize the performance of a deep learning model during both training and inference?
Medium
Nov 2, 2024
Optimization
OpenAI
How would you implement guardrails to ensure ethical AI usage in a real-world application?
Hard
Dec 1, 2024
Ethical Guardrails
Anthropic
How would you optimize a database query to improve runtime?
Medium
Nov 23,2024
Query Optimization
Google
How do you decide which algorithm to use for a given problem?
Medium
Jan 2, 2025
Algorithm Design
Problem Solving
Google
What is perceptron?
Easy
Jan 25, 2018
Artificial Intelligence
Machine Learning
Microsoft
Design a webhook delivery system discussing components, sharding, and fail cases.
Hard
Oct 24, 2024
Distributed Systems
System Design
OpenAI
Tell me about a conflict you had at work.
Medium
Dec 20,2024
Conflict Resolution
Google
What technology stacks do you typically use, and what do you consider most important for doing machine learning?
Hard
Jan 6, 2025
Machine Learning
Technical Skills
Netflix
How would you design and test a metric to compare two user's Netflix recommended lists of movie/tv show preferences.
Hard
Dec 27, 2024
Data Analysis
System Design
TikTok
Design Slack with a focus on multi-device support and retry mechanisms.
Hard
Dec 15, 2024
Artificial Intelligence
System Design
OpenAI
How can you determine if a system is big-endian or little-endian?
Medium
Oct 22,2024
System Architecture
Tesla
Your task is to write a function that can identify the subarray of length k with the maximum possible sum from a given array of integers. Can you devise an algorithm for this?
Hard
Dec 27, 2024
Algorithms
Data Structures
Cognizant
Design a system to deploy and monitor machine learning models in production, ensuring reliability and scalability.