Designing a System to Absorb Massive Meeting-Creation Surges in Video Conferencing Platforms

Designing a System to Absorb Massive Meeting-Creation Surges in Video Conferencing Platforms

Designing a System to Absorb Massive Meeting-Creation Surges in Video Conferencing Platforms A production-grade deep dive into handling synchronized-timezone traffic spikes — the “9 AM problem” — for systems like Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams. 01 · Intro & History02 · The Problem03 · Architecture04 · Internal Working05 ·…

Read More
Designing Typing Indicators & Online Presence at Massive Scale

Designing Typing Indicators & Online Presence at Massive Scale

Designing Typing Indicators & Online Presence at Massive Scale A complete, interview-depth system design walkthrough for building the “is online / is typing” features behind a messaging platform serving hundreds of millions of concurrently connected users — covering persistent connections, TTL-backed presence leases, pub/sub fan-out, and the bounded push-vs-pull trade-offs…

Read More
Designing a Real-Time Transaction Laundering Detection System

Designing a Real-Time Transaction Laundering Detection System

Designing a Real-Time Transaction Laundering Detection System How payment platforms catch merchants that quietly process transactions for undisclosed, higher-risk businesses hiding behind a legitimate storefront — built to run at millions of transactions per minute with sub-200 millisecond added latency on the authorization path. 01 · Intro02 · History03 ·…

Read More
Designing a Chargeback and Dispute Processing System

Designing a Chargeback and Dispute Processing System

Designing a Chargeback and Dispute Processing System A production-grade, interview-focused deep dive into building a platform that ingests card-network disputes, orchestrates merchant responses, applies reason-code rules, and resolves millions of chargebacks a month — without losing a single case or missing a single deadline. 01 · Introduction02 · Architecture03 ·…

Read More
Designing a Real-Time Automated Expense Categorization System

Designing a Real-Time Automated Expense Categorization System

Designing a Real-Time Automated Expense Categorization System A production-grade system design walkthrough for classifying personal finance transactions — groceries, dining, transportation, and beyond — into categories the instant they happen, at the scale of millions of transactions per minute. 01 · Intro & History02 · Architecture03 · Internal Working04 ·…

Read More
Designing an Automated Tax Document Generation System (1099 Forms) for a Gig Payments Platform

Designing an Automated Tax Document Generation System (1099 Forms) for a Gig Payments Platform

Designing an Automated Tax Document Generation System (1099 Forms) for a Gig Payments Platform A production-grade system design walkthrough for engineers building compliant, scalable tax reporting infrastructure that must serve millions of independent contractors correctly, within a narrow, immovable January filing window. 01 · Intro & History02 · Problem03 ·…

Read More