Round: Phone Screen · Type: System Design · Difficulty: 7/10 · Duration: 60 min · Interviewer: Neutral
Topics: System Design, Video Generation, Scheduling, Failure Handling
Location: San Francisco Bay Area
Interview date: 2026-01-22
Summary
I had a phone screen and encountered a new system design question related to video generation.
Details
The phone screen involved designing the video generation part of Sora. The client sends a request to generate a video, and I needed to design the scheduling and worker flow. A key constraint was that each worker can only produce one video, and they need to call an external GPU pool to work. The GPU pool size fluctuates, so workers may be terminated at any time. Handling failure scenarios seemed crucial.
Preparation Tips & Key Takeaways
What I Learned
Handling failure scenarios is critical in distributed systems, especially with fluctuating resources.
Understanding the video generation process and related technologies is important for these types of design questions.
Recommended Preparation
System Design
Study distributed systems concepts, including scheduling, resource management, and fault tolerance.
Review common system design patterns for handling asynchronous tasks and external resource dependencies.
Video Generation
Research the basics of video generation, including different algorithms and technologies.
Resources I Recommend
Distributed systems textbooks and online courses.
Articles and blog posts about video generation technologies.