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How should you structure your answer in an AI system design interview?
30-second answerSay your answer out loud first, then reveal.
Suggested time split (45–60 min)
| Phase | Time |
|---|---|
| Clarify + requirements | 5–8 min |
| Estimates | 3–5 min |
| High-level design | 10 min |
| Deep dives (interviewer-led) | 15–20 min |
| Evals, monitoring, trade-offs | 5–10 min |
What makes an AI design answer different from classic system design
- Quality is a requirement. How will you measure "good answers"? That means an eval plan.
- Cost per request is significant and variable (tokens), not just infrastructure.
- Non-determinism and failure modes: hallucination, prompt injection, refusals.
- Data flywheel: how feedback improves the system over time.
- Build vs buy: API models vs self-hosted.
Signals interviewers look for: asking good clarifying questions, starting simple (a baseline that works), justifying choices with numbers, bringing up evals and safety without being prompted, and adapting when the interviewer changes constraints.
Common mistakes
- Jumping straight to "I'll use LangChain + a vector DB + GPT" without clarifying the problem.
- Never mentioning how quality will be measured.
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