🎬 System Design: Netflix Design System (Frontend Interview Guide)
Category: system-design
Difficulty: hard
Target Level: Senior Frontend Engineer / Staff Engineer Duration: 45-60 minutes Interview Focus: Component Architecture, Design Tokens, Theming, Scalability, Performance Interview Approach & What Interviewers Look For When asked to design Netflix's design system in a frontend interview, interviewers are evaluating: Component Architecture: Can you design a scalable component library that works across web, TV, and mobile web? Design Tokens: Do you understand how to manage design tokens (colors, typography, spacing) at scale? Theming: Can you implement multi-brand theming for different regions and platforms? Performance: How do you ensure fast loading times with tree-shaking and code-splitting? Developer Experience: Can you create an ergonomic API that teams actually want to use? Consistency: How do you enforce visual consistency across 100+ engineering teams? Pro Tip: Start by understanding Netflix's unique constraints (TV interfaces, global scale, A/B testing culture), then design a system that solves their specific problems. Clarifying Questions (First 5 minutes) Before diving in, ask these questions to scope the problem: Functional Scope: "Should the design system support web, mobile web, and TV platforms?" "Do we need to support multiple brands (Netflix, Netflix Games, etc.)?" "Should components be framework-agnostic or React-specific?" "Do we need right-to-left (RTL) language support for global markets?" Non-Functional Requirements: "How many engineering teams will consume this? 10? 100? 1000+?" "What's the bundle size budget per page? <100KB? <200KB?" "Should we support server-side rendering (SSR) for SEO?" "What about accessibility standards? WCAG 2.1 AA compliance?" Technical Constraints: "Can we use CSS-in-JS, or do we need static CSS extraction?" "Do we need to support legacy browsers (IE11)?" "Should components be versioned independently or as a monolithic package?" "What about A/B testing? Do components need variant support?"...