N
Netflix
Fully authored
2 rounds · 60 min each · virtual whiteboard
What they grade on
- Resilience-first thinking — assume failure, design around it
- Understanding of CDN + edge economics
- Familiarity with chaos engineering as a mindset, not a feature
- A/B testability of every user-facing decision
- Operational simplicity — Netflix hires for 'freedom and responsibility'
Deal breakers
- Assuming the network always works
- Ignoring the recommender / ranking layer for a media problem
- Missing the CDN in any large-scale streaming design
Super helpful signals
- Referring to Open Connect, Simian Army, or Zuul with the correct property
- Discussing adaptive bitrate or DRM when relevant
- Naming a specific chaos experiment (Chaos Kong for region failure) when discussing resilience
Delivery advice
- Assume regions can fail and plan for it in the first 10 minutes.
- Talk about the edge before you talk about origin — Netflix optimizes edge-heavy.
- For any user-facing feature, ask 'how would we A/B this?' — Netflix runs thousands of experiments.
- Own the on-call implications — 'this alert would page which team, at what threshold?'
- When asked about failure, name the pattern (bulkhead, circuit breaker, chaos-tested).
Red flags to avoid
- Origin-centric thinking
- Ignoring the recommender in a media problem
- Assuming 100% network reliability
Top questions
Design a video streaming service (from Netflix's angle)
Design a recommendation service
Design a chaos engineering platform
Design a config-service like Archaius
Design a real-time A/B testing platform
Design an edge routing layer like Zuul
Design a video transcoding pipeline
Design a global-scale metrics platform
Design a distributed cache like EVCache
Design personalized 'For You' rows
Level expectations
L4 · Senior SWE (junior)
Rare — Netflix hires mostly Senior+
L5 · Senior SWE
End-to-end streaming feature with resilience thinking
L6 · Staff SWE
Cross-service + edge economics + chaos strategy
L7 · Principal
Platform decisions, org/precedent, cost curves