{"slug": "72-of-anthropic-s-design-questions-are-ai-or-ml-62-of-openai-s-are-classic", "title": "72% of Anthropic's design questions are AI or ML. 62% of OpenAI's are classic.", "summary": "An analysis of reported interview questions found that 21 of Anthropic's 29 system design questions (72%) concern AI systems or ML, versus 19 of OpenAI's 50 (38%). The most frequently reported Anthropic question is designing a batched LLM inference API over GPUs, and five of its questions carry a GPU tag, with AI infrastructure dominating the top five.", "body_md": "*Photo: Lucas Kepner on Unsplash*\n\n21 of Anthropic's 29 reported design questions are about AI systems or ML, against 19 of OpenAI's 50. The one reported the most is a batched LLM inference API over GPUs, last asked Oct 15, 2026.\n\nAnthropic’s [system design round](https://landthelab.com/companies/anthropic/rounds/system-design) usually comes on the first onsite day, with coding. A weak first day can cancel the second, so this round decides whether you get to the hiring manager and the values round. It runs 55 minutes with no AI help. You may be asked to type the design into a shared Google Doc instead of drawing it. Some interviewers let you share any drawing tool, but practise writing a design as text.\n\nThe round grades five things: your APIs, the data model, the request flow, how you handle the load they state, and at least one failure case. Managers may review a design doc with you instead, and some loops run two design rounds on the team’s own domain. The rest of Anthropic’s loop is in our [post on its coding questions and values round](https://dev.to/landthelab/the-5-coding-questions-anthropic-keeps-asking-and-the-round-most-people-fail-503f).\n\nWe counted every design question reported at [Anthropic](https://landthelab.com/companies/anthropic) (n=29): AI system design, ML design and classic system design. AI systems lead with 12. Only 8 are the classic kind you find in a system design book. 5 carry a GPU tag: [batched LLM inference API over GPUs](https://landthelab.com/questions/batched-llm-inference-api-over-gpus), [design an LLM inference serving platform](https://landthelab.com/questions/design-an-llm-inference-serving-platform), [design a distributed AI model downloader](https://landthelab.com/questions/design-a-distributed-ai-model-downloader), [matmul performance modeling on a fixed GPU](https://landthelab.com/questions/matmul-performance-modeling-on-a-fixed-gpu) and [design a GPU scheduling platform](https://landthelab.com/questions/design-a-gpu-scheduling-platform).\n\n5 of the 9 ML design questions come from a take-home, a practical round or the screen, not from the design round. If you are interviewing for a software engineering role, the AI system questions are the ones to drill.\n\nThese 5 are reported at Anthropic more than any of its other design questions, the most reported first:\n\n3 of the 5 are AI infrastructure. The classic one is [a one-on-one chat system with presence and offline queue](https://landthelab.com/questions/one-on-one-chat-system-with-presence-and-offline-queue), a question any company could ask. The fifth asks you to [critique a design doc from the team's backlog](https://landthelab.com/questions/critique-a-design-doc-from-the-team-s-backlog), which means pulling apart someone else’s design. In all, 9 of Anthropic’s design questions were asked since Sep 1, 2026.\n\nAnthropic’s design questions by the round candidates named (n=22 with a known round). The design round produces 11. A design review, where you read a design and critique it, produces 5. Besides [critique a design doc from the team's backlog](https://landthelab.com/questions/critique-a-design-doc-from-the-team-s-backlog), the reviews cover [usage billing for an LLM API](https://landthelab.com/questions/design-review-usage-billing-for-an-llm-api), [rolling out a new model version](https://landthelab.com/questions/design-review-rolling-out-a-new-model-version), [checkpointing a large training run](https://landthelab.com/questions/design-review-checkpointing-a-large-training-run) and [an eval gate for model launches](https://landthelab.com/questions/design-review-an-eval-gate-for-model-launches). The rest come from the screen, practical coding and take-homes.\n\nA review tests the same judgment from the other side. Practise reading a design doc and naming what breaks first, what it costs, and what you would ask the author.\n\n[OpenAI](https://landthelab.com/companies/openai) has 50 reported design questions to Anthropic’s 29, out of 144 questions of any kind to Anthropic’s 72. The share is what differs. 72% of Anthropic’s design questions are AI or ML, against 38% of OpenAI’s. OpenAI’s most reported design questions are [design an online chess game](https://landthelab.com/questions/design-an-online-chess-game), [design a payment system](https://landthelab.com/questions/design-a-payment-system) and [design a video generation service on a scarce GPU pool](https://landthelab.com/questions/design-a-video-generation-service-on-a-scarce-gpu-pool). Our [OpenAI post](https://dev.to/landthelab/the-12-coding-questions-openai-keeps-asking-its-screen-bans-autocomplete-39ep) covers its loop.\n\n7 design questions are reported at both labs: [design an AI prompt playground](https://landthelab.com/questions/design-an-ai-prompt-playground), [design an LLM inference serving platform](https://landthelab.com/questions/design-an-llm-inference-serving-platform), [evaluate a new LLM before launch](https://landthelab.com/questions/evaluate-a-new-llm-before-launch), [design ChatGPT](https://landthelab.com/questions/design-chatgpt), [design a Slack-like chat system](https://landthelab.com/questions/design-a-slack-like-chat-system), [design a RAG system over company docs](https://landthelab.com/questions/design-a-rag-system-over-company-docs) and [design a GPU scheduling platform](https://landthelab.com/questions/design-a-gpu-scheduling-platform). If you are in both loops, start there. Our [post on AI lab design questions](https://dev.to/landthelab/openai-still-asks-you-to-design-tinyurl-mistral-asks-about-mixture-of-experts-3594) compares nine companies.\n\nMethodology\n\n29 design questions reported at Anthropic and 50 at OpenAI (AI system design, ML design and classic system design), 61 of them with a last-asked date (newest Oct 16, 2026), taken Oct 19, 2026. 22 of Anthropic’s have a known round. “Reported the most” means rated high or very high on how much candidates report them. A question counts as AI or ML when it is an AI system or ML design question; a GPU tag is one of the topic tags we give each question. The round (length, format, AI rule and what it grades) comes from candidate reports and public guides, compiled in Land the Lab’s loop for Anthropic.\n\nLimits: the sample is small. 7 of Anthropic’s design questions have no known round, and 11 have no last-asked date. Reports lean toward software engineering roles. We don’t publish counts per question, only the tier. Loops vary by team and level.\n\nHow we made this: Land the Lab counted the reports by type and round. The charts are generated from that data; the text was drafted with AI and checked against it.\n\nOriginally published at [landthelab.com](https://landthelab.com/blog/anthropic-system-design-questions), where every company's interview loop is mapped round by round.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/72-of-anthropic-s-design-questions-are-ai-or-ml-62-of-openai-s-are-classic", "canonical_source": "https://dev.to/landthelab/72-of-anthropics-design-questions-are-ai-or-ml-62-of-openais-are-classic-hkp", "published_at": "2026-10-20 00:06:29+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-10-20 00:15:38.112515+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "machine-learning", "large-language-models", "ai-infrastructure"], "entities": ["Anthropic", "OpenAI", "LandTheLab"], "also_reported_by": [], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/72-of-anthropic-s-design-questions-are-ai-or-ml-62-of-openai-s-are-classic", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/72-of-anthropic-s-design-questions-are-ai-or-ml-62-of-openai-s-are-classic.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/72-of-anthropic-s-design-questions-are-ai-or-ml-62-of-openai-s-are-classic.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/72-of-anthropic-s-design-questions-are-ai-or-ml-62-of-openai-s-are-classic.jsonld"}}