How Figma actually runs its system design round, the signature questions candidates report, and what interviewers probe. Part of the company-specific interviews index.
How Figma runs it. Classic infrastructure with a real-time multiplayer tilt: WebSocket scaling, presence, and state recovery on disconnect. Practical conflict-resolution literacy matters more than CRDT derivations: knowing why per-property last-writer-wins is often enough is the fluency signal.
- Design multiplayer document sync: optimistic local edits, server-ordered operations, reconnect recovery
- Design presence and live cursors for thousands of concurrent files
- Scale a WebSocket layer: connection affinity, deploys without dropping everyone, reconnect storms
- Requirements through the user's eyes: what latency is felt, what loss is acceptable
- The stateful-connection problem: sessions pinned to servers and what happens when one dies
- Degradation as product design: what the user sees when sync struggles
- Patterns to review: long polling websockets sse, consistency models, message queues
- Practice questions: Design collaborative whiteboard, Design google docs
- Full company guide: Figma system design interview