Natera Software Engineer interview experience

My loop centered on writing designs for common system components, with questions framed like how to implement familiar services.

I remember being asked to design a URL shortener similar to TinyURL or Bitly, then to design a text-sharing service like Pastebin, and to design a rate limiter for an API. The set also included a classic parking-lot or garage system design, and another prompt that involved the backend for a simple web crawler.

The difficulty came across as difficult because the questions weren’t narrow coding tasks—they were about making architectural decisions and laying out how