Stripe System design

May 25, 2021 20 Comments

I have a virtual onsite setup with Stripe this week and was wondering what the system design interview will entail. Will it be a standard sys design question (eg. Design twitter, YouTube, etc) or will it be a design problem from their own engineering?

Thanks

comments

Want to comment? LOG IN or SIGN UP
TOP 20 Comments
  • Got a lot of DMs
    So responding here for my Stripe experience

    1. Coding: Speed is the key. TBH, this was my worst round. I breezed through part 1 of my coding. But for part2, it seemed cumbersome to include the new changes with my original DS. Ended up not finishing it and had bug πŸ˜” Also, I felt the question required a lot of thinking and typing compared to my initial screening.

    Integration: This round was a little weird for me. I am not sure how I will be judged. Once I started with the challenge, I had a classpath issue. We went the rabbit hole of figuring out what the issue was and in the end turned out to be an issue with IntelliJ. Ugh. I then had only 15 mins to solve which wasn't enough. The interviewer did tell me that they looking for signals on how I would try to figure our local/remote issues in day to day coding. They did mention that this rabbit hole also gives them a good signal. The interviewer was nice and collaborative. He himself was at lost as to why we were seeing this issue.

    System design:
    I was given a simplified Stripe architecture and was told a build a service which interacted with existing Stripe services and we went into the details of API, DB, scalability, etc. No matter what the service to be builtin, the standard system design patterns still applied and I was tested on that. I felt 45 mins was too short though and I couldn't into some more details I wanted to get into.

    4. Bug Squash

    I was not able to fix the bug. The interviewer clearly mentioned in the start that they are not looking for the bug to be solved. All they wanted was continuous communication on my thought process. I was able to get to understand the issue in 30 mins. I applied a fix, but introduced a side effect. The library code was umm ugly lol. Very hard to understand. In the end, the interview did tell me that I had nailed down what the actual issue was given how ugly the code was.

    5. Manager

    This round is your typical behavior round. They will delve deep into your projects, leadership, etc. Be prepared to answer why Stripe, etc. The HM definitely loved my projects and contributions.

    In the end, I loved the interview process. I suck at algorithmic questions, so this was a much better process for me. The interviewers were nice, collaborative, and definitely smart. I wish I had performed better. My advice would be to keep an eye on the clock esp for the coding round
    May 28, 2021 3
    • Cisco
      NjmG56

      Go to company page Cisco

      NjmG56
      Thank you for this @bottomcodr! This is indeed very helpful. Couple of questions for you. 1. Did the interviewer expect you to provide back of the envelope calculations and skeleton code. 2. Was the coding round somewhat similar to the phone screen?
      May 28, 2021
    • 1. Worked with the interviewer to decide the scale. I started assuming some numbers and the interviewer responded with the expected average and peak traffic
      2. The coding round was similar to the phone screen. I felt my onsite question was slightly more challenging to complete in the timeframe
      May 28, 2021
  • In my care they had a printed sheet of paper with a problem description.
    May 25, 2021 2
  • Update: Recruiter said I did well in my technical rounds and asked me for 2 references. I believe they were really strong references. Got rejected by HC. Recruiter said it was a very tough decision. Waiting for feedback.
    Oh well enjoying my rejection spree from all the top tech companies. Interviewing is so hard 😞
    Jun 18, 2021 5
  • VMware
    iCwL75

    Go to company page VMware

    iCwL75
    Thanks OP for being the hero that we don’t deserve.
    Jul 9, 2021 2
  • Groupon
    shxykdk

    Go to company page Groupon

    shxykdk
    Is this for senior software engineer role (L4 in stripe)?
    Jul 15, 2021 1