Design a distributed key-value store (partitioning, replication, and consistency).

The Dynamo question. Interviewers want three decisions made cleanly: how you partition keys so adding nodes does not reshuffle everything, how you replicate for durability, and where you sit on the CAP spectrum. Here is how to reason through all three with concrete quorum math.

Updated Sep 2026 · Grounded in real GenAI, LLM, and AI/ML engineering interview loops and written to a senior-engineer editorial bar.