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 land on the CAP spectrum. Here is how to reason about all three with concrete quorum math.

Updated Aug 2026 · Grounded in real Applied AI Engineer interview loops and written to a senior-engineer editorial bar.