TinyURL (URL Shortener)

Standard URL-shortener system design used as a phone-screen SD warm-up in some loops. Cover the encoding scheme, collision handling, read-heavy caching, and analytics. Problem Statement Design a URL shortener like TinyURL. Users paste long URLs and receive short aliases; redirect requests should resolve quickly and safely. A February 2026 Roblox onsite report described this as system design - TinyURL for a Software Engineer role. Treat it as the standard URL-shortener prompt: short-code generation, low-latency redirects, storage, caching, analytics, abuse prevention, and optional expiry or custom aliases if the interviewer asks.