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AT&T·Software Engineer·Onsite - System Design / Architecture·Senior

SeniorPrefer not to say
Apr 2026

Summary

System design round with a principal engineer for a software engineer role. Felt like a decent environment to work in, though I left unsure whether they thought I was the right fit.

Questions Asked (1)

Q1

Design a system that records meetings and analyzes customer data from those recordings.

System DesignData ModelingTechnical Trade-offs
Author's notes

Big open-ended prompt.

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AI HintsAI Generated

Suggested Approach

Start by clarifying requirements: scale (number of meetings per day, concurrent participants), data types (audio, video, transcripts), and analysis goals (sentiment, topic extraction, compliance). Then propose a high-level architecture with ingestion, storage, processing, and analysis layers, and dive into trade-offs for key components like real-time vs batch processing and data modeling for customer insights.

Pro tip: Emphasize data privacy and compliance (e.g., GDPR, CCPA) early, especially for customer data, and suggest anonymization or encryption to build trust. Also, mention cost optimization by using tiered storage and spot instances for batch processing.

1. Clarify Requirements and Scope

Ask questions to understand scale, latency needs, data retention, and analysis types. This ensures the design meets actual business needs and avoids over-engineering.

2. High-Level Architecture

Outline components: ingestion (WebRTC, SIP), storage (object store for recordings, database for metadata), processing (transcription, NLP), and analysis (dashboards, APIs). Draw a simple diagram.

3. Data Modeling and Storage

Design schemas for meetings, participants, transcripts, and customer interactions. Choose appropriate databases (e.g., relational for metadata, NoSQL for transcripts, data lake for raw recordings).

4. Processing Pipeline

Describe batch vs stream processing for transcription and analysis. Discuss tools like Kafka, Spark, or serverless functions, and how to handle failures and retries.

5. Trade-offs and Scalability

Discuss trade-offs: cost vs performance, consistency vs availability, and how to scale each component. Mention monitoring, security, and compliance.

Key Points to Mention

  • Real-time vs batch processing for transcription and analysis
  • Data partitioning and indexing for efficient querying of customer data
  • Use of NLP services (e.g., AWS Comprehend, Google NLP) for sentiment and entity extraction
  • Security: encryption at rest and in transit, access controls, and audit logs
  • Scalability: horizontal scaling of ingestion and processing, use of message queues
  • Cost optimization: tiered storage, spot instances, and serverless for sporadic workloads

AI-generated suggestions, not part of the candidate's original notes. May be inaccurate — verify before relying on them.