Mock system design interview at Adobe

A live 45-minute round on a question reported in Adobe interviews, run by an AI interviewer that asks one thing at a time, probes what you say, looks at your whiteboard, and weighs what that round is reported to weigh. It ends with a debrief: a score, what was strong, what was missing.

your question

Design a URL Shortener

bit.ly at scale: turn long URLs into short codes, redirect in milliseconds from anywhere, count the clicks.

You will not see the requirements, the numbers or the design before you start. That is the point.

Walk through it first

What the Adobe round is reported to look like

45–60 minutes, and loops often pair it with a separate low-level design round: classes, a database schema and code for something like a booking, checkout or elevator system. The high-level round is reported to sit close to Adobe products, such as storing and processing documents and media.

What it weighs

Requirements first, then a high-level diagram and a database design
Storage choices you can justify, starting with which database and why
On low-level prompts: a schema and queries that serve each use case, and modular code
How the system behaves under load and when a part fails

The common mistake

Leaving the data model to the end. Candidates in both kinds of design round report being asked for the database schema early, then for the queries or writes behind each use case, so settle the tables before going deep on classes or services.

From public interview guides and candidate reports, and Adobe’s own interview guidance where it publishes any. Not endorsed by Adobe. The interviewer is an AI running in that style; it is practice, not a prediction.

Start the round

Timed · 45 minutesInterview conditions. The AI interviewer owns the clock; the AI Mentor is off.With the AI Mentor · untimedNo clock, and an AI Mentor beside you to ask when you are stuck.

The interviewer’s opening question is free. Answering it is part of Pro. See an example round and its debrief →

The 2 questions this round draws from

Each is reported in Adobe interviews. Pick one to sit, or read its reference design and walk through a strong answer first.

Design a URL Shortenerbit.ly at scale: turn long URLs into short codes, redirect in milliseconds from anywhere, count the clicks.
drawn
Design Figma500 k design files open at once, some with 200 people: objects converge live, cursors stream, and 300 MB files open in seconds.

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