2 min lesson
System design under enterprise constraints
Make the call in this situation: "In the system-design round, what are interviewers primarily grading?" Explain what supports it.
Step 1 of 3
The system-design round gives you an AI workflow and a hostile environment: SSOSingle Sign-On. One company login (usually via SAML or OIDC) instead of a separate password per tool. Press Enter for the full definition., data residency, legacy systems, a security team that says no by default. They grade your reasoning out loud, not a single correct diagram.
Take a concrete brief: "design automated PR review for a bank with 3,000 engineers, self-hosted everything, SOC 2, no source code may leave their VPC." The naive answer wires a model to a webhook. The strong answer treats trust boundaries, observability and rollback as load-bearing from the first sketch.