50+ Meta Backend Engineer System Design Interview Questions (And Answers) Explained in Detail

The Meta backend engineer system design interview questions guide will help you excel in interviews with Meta and top-tier tech firms. The interviews evaluate candidates’ knowledge of designing applications such as YouTube, Uber, Twitter, scalability, caching, and databases.

Meta backend engineer system designers build and maintain server-side logic, databases, APIs, and architecture that run applications. The focus is on scaling, security, seamless data flow, performance, and comfortable functionality.

The Meta backend engineer system design interview questions guide suggests candidates should prep up on the design of robust systems, design and manipulate design models, optimize queries, manage server logic and authentication, integrate with vendor services, and coordinate with front end systems.

The Meta backend engineer system design interview questions guide deep dives into several technical aspects, the interview process, in addition to behavioral questions.

Key Takeaways

Who is a Meta Backend System Design Engineer

A Meta backend system design engineer is an engineer who specializes in designing large-scale, distributed backend systems that support products used by millions or billions of users. The role focuses on making high-level architectural decisions around scalability, reliability, performance, and security, while ensuring backend services can evolve with changing product and business needs.

Beyond system design, a Meta backend system design engineer works closely with product managers, frontend engineers, and infrastructure teams to translate requirements into resilient technical solutions. They take ownership of critical services, mentor other engineers, and drive best practices in design reviews, ensuring systems remain maintainable and aligned with Meta’s long-term vision.

Responsibilities of a Meta Backend System Design Engineer

A Meta backend engineer system designer is responsible for designing, building, and maintaining server-side logic that powers large-scale products. The role focuses on creating systems that are scalable, reliable, secure, and high-performing, while ensuring smooth data flow between services and user-facing applications.

A major part of the role involves architecting robust backend systems and distributed services that can handle high traffic and growth. This includes making thoughtful design decisions that balance scalability, fault tolerance, and long-term maintainability.

Backend engineers also build and maintain APIs, such as RESTful or GraphQL interfaces, to enable efficient communication between frontend applications and internal services. These APIs must be reliable, well-documented, and easy for other teams to integrate with.

Database responsibilities include designing efficient schemas, optimizing queries, and ensuring data integrity across systems. Engineers are also responsible for managing backups, recovery strategies, and ensuring that data remains consistent and accessible at scale.

Performance optimization is another key responsibility, requiring engineers to profile systems, debug bottlenecks, and improve response times. This ensures applications can handle heavy loads while using resources efficiently.

Security is built into every layer of backend development at Meta. Engineers implement authentication, authorization, and data protection mechanisms to safeguard user data and prevent vulnerabilities.

Finally, Meta backend engineers are expected to maintain high code quality by writing clean, maintainable, and well-documented code. They actively participate in code reviews, collaborate closely with frontend and cross-functional teams, and mentor junior engineers to raise overall engineering standards.

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Levels of Meta Backend Engineers

Meta uses a common structured hierarchy for all engineers. Backend engineers have an individual contributor (IC) level, E3 to E8, with increasing responsibilities and impact.

Based on your experience and skills, the Meta backend engineer system design interview will be for one of these categories. Let us look at these levels.

Title/ Level	Indicative experience	Expectations and impact
Software Engineer (Entry) – E3 (IC3)	0–2 years	The E3 role completes individual tasks under guidance and delivers production-quality code.
E4 (IC4)	2–5 years	The E4 role completes full features and provides code reviews.
Senior Engineer (Terminal) – E5 (IC5)	5–10 years	The E5 role manages the complete problem space, sets technical direction, and mentors junior engineers.
Staff Engineer – E6 (IC6)	8–15+ years	The E6 role is responsible for engineering solutions for multiple teams and the architectural direction.
Senior Staff Engineer – E7 (IC7)	10+ years	The E7 role manages large programs with multiple teams and organizations.
Principal Engineer – E8 (IC8)	12+ years	The E8 role is that of an industry expert managing technical, process, and cultural changes in Meta.

What to Expect in Meta Backend System Design Interviews?

The Meta backend engineer system design interview questions will test your overall knowledge of backend engineering, and not just a few tools. Meta expects backend engineers to own the product and services, and deliver complete solutions.

Interviews would last for 40-60 minutes, depending on your knowledge, enthusiasm, and confidence. You may be given a scenario and asked to respond. Let us look at some expectations of Meta backend system design engineers.

Problem Definition and Requirements:

• This session can last for 5-10 mins.
• For a given scenario, clarify questions, declare assumptions for functional features, non-functional scale, latency, and availability.
• Define scope, such as feed or notifications.

High-Level Design

• The session can last for 10-15 minutes.
• You will be asked to draw core components such as clients, load balancers, web servers, databases, caches, and message queues.
• Show data flow with boxes and arrows.

Deep Dive

• Questions will be for 15-20 mins.
• You will be asked to select a couple of critical areas, such as feed generation, image storage, user data modeling, and API design.
• For the selection, you will explain database choices such as SQL vs. NoSQL, caching strategies, and sharding.

Trade-Offs and Bottlenecks

• The session can last for 5 minutes.
• You have to explain the advantages and disadvantages of the CAP theorem, consistency, and availability.
• You will identify and address scalability bottlenecks, such as database reads/writes

Wrap-Up and Discussions

• You can review the design, suggest challenges, and improvements.

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Why Meta Backend Engineer System Design Interviews Are Uniquely Challenging

Meta backend engineer system design interview questions are uniquely challenging as they focus on product thinking, requiring candidates to understand user needs and business goals, and design for the massive scale of billions of users.

Some of the Meta backend engineer system design interview questions will focus on general theory and concepts. However, the questions test your ability for real-world implementation of solutions, scale, consistency, and accuracy.

Some key aspects of the Meta backend engineer system design interview questions are:

• Product-Centric and Ambiguous Prompts: Questions will be on Meta products such as Instagram Stories, WhatsApp Status, News Feed, and Facebook. You need to ask clarifying questions to define the scope, users, and success metrics before drawing boxes.
• Extreme Scale Complexity: Designs must process billions of users and massive data, complex topics like caching, data sharding, load balancing, and distributed systems.
• Trade-Offs: Interviewers will ask you to justify choices for NoSQL for high writes, relational for consistency, and discuss the CAP Theorem and real-world compromises.
• Time Pressure: A duration of 45 minutes requires a structured approach, rapid iteration, and clear communication to cover high-level architecture down to specific components.
• Deep Dive into Core Concepts: Be ready to answer questions on API design, database schemas, caching strategies, reliability, and fault tolerance

Steps in the Meta Backend Engineer Coding Interview Questions and Process

The Meta backend engineer coding interview process has several rounds with senior technical experts examining skills in backend developer related processes. Meta backend engineer coding interview questions guide discusses these steps.

Preparation: You need to prep up, upskills, read about emerging technologies to prepare for the senior engineering manager interview. Big tech firms use an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) to scan for keywords. Write a professional resume to meet the specific role criteria, and post it on LinkedIn and other job sites.

• Recruiter Screen: Recruiters from tech firms may approach you, or you can apply to the firms. The recruiter may call and ask initial questions about your profile, qualifications, experience, and assess if you are appropriate for the next rounds.
• Technical Screen: A series of interviews is administered by the technical teams, coding, and system design managers to evaluate your skills and suitability. Candidates have to log in to an AI-enabled coding environment where they are administered MCQ questions.
• On-Site/Virtual Interviews: If you have cleared the previous rounds, you are invited to the senior engineering onsite, virtual interview process. Technical and HR managers conduct face-to-face interviews through video conferencing. Candidates are evaluated for their presentation, communication, personality, job knowledge, cultural fit, and other behavioral aspects.
• Final Round: If you clear this round, then there will be another round with the senior management and then you will get an offer letter.

Meta Backend Engineer System Design Interview Questions

Meta backend engineer system design interview questions will cover topics on server-side scripting, Backend frameworks, System architecture, API development, Database management, Performance optimization, Security implementation, Code quality, and integration.

This section of the Meta backend engineer system design interview questions covers various technical-related questions that may be asked during the interviews.

Server-Side Scripting Meta Backend Engineer System Design Interview Questions

Meta backend engineer system design interview questions on server-side scripting are on general backend development principles and language-specific expertise. Questions will be on Node.js, Python, PHP, and Ruby.

Meta expects ready-to-implement code, and you will be given problems in an AI environment. Let us look at some of the server-side scripting Meta backend engineer system design interview questions.

General Concepts

1. Explain with examples the difference between server and client-side scripting.

2. What is statelessness in RESTful web services?

3. Explain the best practices for designing scalable RESTful APIs?

4. Explain the core components of an HTTP request and response.

5. How do you code authentication and authorization securely in backend systems?

Languages

6. Though it is single-threaded, how does Node.js handle concurrency?

7. How does UPI trigger the event loop in Node.js?

8. Explain with examples the process of managing sessions in a server-side application.

9. Which database management techniques ensure data integrity and high availability?

10. Explain GlideRecord with an example?

Problems

11. Design a traffic control system, a Tic-Tac-Toe game,

12. Explain the design of Netflix.

13. Draw the design of a type-ahead search engine service.

14. Explain the design of global file storage and file sharing services like Google Drive, Dropbox, etc?

15. Create a design for an API Rate Limiter system for GitHub or Firebase sites.

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Backend Frameworks Meta Backend Engineer System Design Interview Questions

Meta backend engineer system design interview questions on frameworks will be on general software engineering knowledge and specific questions related to a particular framework. Be prepared to answer questions about backend and frontend frameworks such as Spring Boot, Express.js, and Robot Framework.

General

16. What is the difference between Monolithic, SOA, and Microservices architectures?

17. How do you implement DRY and KISS principles?

18. What is middleware in the context of backend frameworks?

19. Describe API versioning without breaking client applications.

20. What is idempotency, and why is it important in the API design of payment systems?

Databases and Storage

21. What are ACID properties in relational databases?

22. When will you select SQL over NoSQL?

23. Explain the process to optimize a slow SQL query.

24. What is database sharding and replication?

25. Explain methods to prevent SQL injection attacks?

26. What is rate limiting and its use?

27. Explain the process to manage a sudden spike in traffic to your backend services?

Express.js

28. Express.js and why is it used?

29. When do you use the next() function?

30. Explain routing handling with Express.js.

31. How will you serve static files in Express?

32. Explain the process to secure an Express.js application against common vulnerabilities.

33. How will you handle CPU-intensive tasks in Node.js/Express.js?

Spring Boot

Meta backend engineer system design interview questions on Spring Boot will focus on understanding core Spring Boot concepts, practical application of features, and an introduction to more advanced topics like microservices architecture, security, and testing.

34. What is the internal working of the @SpringBootApplication annotation?

35. Describe the difference between @Controller and @RestController.

36. What is dependency Injection (DI), and what is the difference between constructor and setter injection?

37. Define and manage properties in Spring Boot

38. Explain Spring Profiles.

39. Explain how Spring Boot handles caching, and what annotations are used?

30. Describe “N+1 selects problem” in JPA/Hibernate with a solution.

41. Explain the process of implementing asynchronous processing in Spring Boot.

Recommended Read: Meta Data Engineer Interview Questions and Preparation Guide

API Development Meta Backend Engineer System Design Interview Questions <h3>

Meta backend engineer system design interview questions in API will focus on OpenAPI schema, defining your API’s structure and behavior using the OpenAPI Specification (OAS). You will be asked questions in YAML or JSON format.

Understanding OpenAPI

42. Explain OpenAPI and how it assists API development.

43. Describe the relation between the OpenAPI schema linked to RESTful APIs?

44. Describe how the use of the OpenAPI specification helps in a Node.js project for documentation, client generation, and validation.

45. What are the key components of an OpenAPI specification?

46. How will you integrate an OpenAPI-first approach into building a new API in a Node.js development workflow?

47. For an API endpoint, how will you define its request and response schemas in OpenAPI? Creating a user and retrieving a list of products.

48. How will you secure your Node.js API with security definitions in the OpenAPI?

Database Management Meta Backend Engineer System Design Interview Questions

Database management, Meta backend engineer system design interview questions focus on creating efficient and scalable data systems. Questions will be on normalization, indexing, transactions (ACID), concurrency, SQL, and data modeling E-R models.

Let us look at some of the database management Meta backend engineer system design interview questions.

DBMS Concepts

49. How can you reduce redundancy (1NF, 2NF, 3NF, BCNF) vs. improving performance by adding redundancy?

50. Explain transactions ACID – Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability, and how locks shared/exclusive ensure isolation.

51. What are ER models, conceptual, logical, and physical designs, and keys for Primary, Foreign, and Candidate?

52. Explaining different types of B-trees, clustered vs. non-clustered, and their impact on query performance.

53. How will you set up master-slave or multi-master replication to ensure data redundancy and availability in case of failure?

54. How will you implement layers like Redis or Memcached to reduce database load and improve latency?

55. Draw the components for a global chat service like WhatsApp.

56. Show how to implement a stack using two queues or a queue using two stacks.

57. How do you reverse a linked list iteratively and recursively?

58. When do you select a Trie Prefix Tree over a HashMap for string storage?

59. How do you implement an LRU Cache and a cycle in a linked list?

60. How would you convert a Binary Tree to a Doubly Linked List in-place?

Performance Optimization Meta Backend Engineer System Design Interview Questions

Performance optimization, Meta backend engineer system design interview questions will focus on metrics latency, throughput), scaling horizontal/vertical, caching, and databases indexing, sharding.

Questions will also be on load balancing, CDNs, message queues (Kafka), and specific scenarios like rate limiting or real-time systems. Let us look at some of the Performance optimization Meta backend engineer system design interview questions.

Metrics

61. Give examples of Latency, throughput, availability, and QPS.

62. Under what conditions will you use horizontal and. Vertical scaling?

63. Explain distributing traffic for round-robin, least connections.

64. How will you manage in-memory, distributed Redis, and memcached strategies?

65. Describe decoupling services and handling async tasks with Kafka and RabbitMQ.

Optimization

66. Explain the use of or WHERE, JOIN clauses; avoiding SELECT *.

67. Describe with examples sharding and partitioning to distribute data across multiple databases.

68. How do you handle data consistency in distributed databases and obtain eventual consistency?

System Design Questions

69. Design a URL Shortener with key generation, hash, counter, storage, and redirects.

70. Design a Rate Limiter algorithm with a token bucket, leaky bucket, and distributed implementation.

71. Design a feed system for Twitter/Instagram.

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Security Implementation Meta Backend Engineer System Design Interview Questions

Security implementation, Meta backend engineer system design interview questions test your knowledge to build scalable, resilient systems, while protecting data and infrastructure. The designs cover topics like authentication (MFA, SSO), authorization, encryption, API security (rate limiting, WAFs), and DDoS mitigation.

Security Design Patterns

72. Design an Auth0-like service (SSO, MFA, OAuth, JWT session management, and role-based access control.

73. Describe a rate-limiting, WAF integration, API Gateway security, OWASP Top 10 mitigation (SQLi, XSS, CSRF).

74. Explain the encryption at rest/transit, key management, secrets management, and data masking.

75. How do you protect for DDoS, network segmentation, and secure microservices communication (mTLS)?

76. Design logging, monitoring, alerting, and an incident response pipeline.

77. Explain with examples SQL Injection, CSRF, XSS, and Buffer Overflows.

78. Design Symmetric, Asymmetric, Hashing, TLS/SSL Forward Secrecy systems.

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Conclusion

The blog presented a comprehensive set of Meta backend engineer system design interview questions. Questions covered several key topics, technologies, tools, and methodologies of Meta backend engineer coding interview topics.

While you have the experience and qualifications, confidence and presentation skills are also important. Interviews are tough, and you need expert guidance to help you crack the questions. All the stages of the Meta backend engineer coding interview process are important.

However, this is the starting point in the Meta backend engineer system design interview questions. At Interview Kickstart, we have several domain-specific experts who have worked for Google and top-tier tech firms.

Let our experts help you with the Meta backend engineer system design interview questions. You have much better chances of securing the coveted job.

FAQs: Meta Backend Engineer System Design Interview Questions

Q1. What is the method to prepare for the Meta backend engineer system design interview questions?

Meta backend engineer system design interview questions are intensive and will test your expertise in multiple areas of system design engineering. Revisit your projects and the technology aspects, and prepare use case stories. Visit Meta to understand their case studies and the technology solutions they implement.

Q2. Do we have to show coding expertise in the technical rounds?

A high level of knowledge about coding, algorithms, models, front-end, and back-end practices is needed. You will be a part of technical experts and build solutions with emerging tech.

Q3. Do we need to have certifications?

Certifications certainly help to reinforce your skills and expertise. Study the job requirements to know the details of qualifications, experience, and certifications.

Q4. What other preparations are needed to crack the Meta backend engineer system design interview questions?

At Interview Kickstart, we have a structured training course on preparing for interviews. The details are given in the ‘Learn from Experts’ section.

Q5. Whom should I approach if I have some questions after I finish the course?

Once you register for the Master Course for Meta backend engineer system design interview questions, we provide support for 10 months.

References

1. What is Full Stack Development?
2. Full-stack development in Project IDX

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