System design

Pinterest System Design Questions

Every system design problem candidates reported at Pinterest between September 2025 and September 2026, most-asked first. Each one links to a full solution. Tick them off as you go.

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I'm Alex. I'll pick one of these Pinterest questions and interview you on it: scope, design, and deep dives.

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6problems
10candidate reports
4asked more than once
15topics
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Companies

Meta26Microsoft24Amazon23OpenAI22Google20TikTok16Salesforce15Anthropic15Uber12LinkedIn11Apple11JPMorgan11Atlassian11Snowflake9Netflix9Oracle9Goldman Sachs8Rippling8Databricks7Walmart7Airbnb7Capital One7NVIDIA6Pinterest6Roblox6Flipkart4Bloomberg4Visa4Adobe4Anduril1

Topics

Design a Typeahead Suggestion System
3 reports · last seen Aug 2026SearchCachingData Pipelines
Intermediate▶ Mock
Design Comment Notifications with Viral-Pin Aggregation
2 reports · last seen Aug 2026Real-timeMessagingDistributed Systems
Advanced+5▶ Mock
Design a Distributed Rate-Limiting Service
2 reports · last seen Jul 2026Rate LimitingDistributed SystemsAPI Design
Intermediate+9▶ Mock
Design Catalog Update Pipeline
2 reports · last seen Feb 2026E-commerceCachingDatabases
Intermediate▶ Mock
Design a Large-File Upload and Analysis Flow
1 report · last seen Sep 2026StorageData PipelinesSecurity
Intermediate▶ Mock
Design an ads event reporting system
1 report · last seen Jan 2026AdsAnalyticsData Pipelines
Advanced+2▶ Mock

Duplicate reports of the same problem are merged and counted.

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Frequently Asked Questions

What system design questions does Pinterest ask?

Candidates reported 6 distinct system design problems at Pinterest between September 2025 and September 2026, including Design a Typeahead Suggestion System, Design Comment Notifications with Viral-Pin Aggregation, Design a Distributed Rate-Limiting Service.

How to prepare for Pinterest system design interview?

Start with the Pinterest problems reported most often, work through each full solution, then practice explaining a design end to end under time pressure in a mock interview.

What is the difference between HLD and LLD at Pinterest?

HLD (High-Level Design) focuses on system architecture, scalability, and component interactions. LLD (Low-Level Design) dives into class diagrams, API contracts, and database schemas. Pinterest tests both.