Interview Questions/System Design/Design an IoT Telemetry Ingestion Platform
AdvancedSystem-Design
45 min

Design an IoT Telemetry Ingestion Platform

IoTStreamingSecurityDevice Management
Advertisement
Interview Question

Design a platform to ingest telemetry from millions of devices with intermittent connectivity, command/control, and fleet management.

Key Points to Cover
  • Protocols (MQTT/HTTP), device identity and secure bootstrapping
  • Ingestion & backpressure; buffering on device and server
  • Command/control channel and QoS; offline retry semantics
  • Data pipeline: hot storage vs cold storage; schema evolution
  • Fleet management: OTA updates, rollout rings, health monitoring
  • Multi-tenant isolation and rate limiting
Evaluation Rubric
Appropriate protocols & device identity25% weight
Reliable ingestion & backpressure25% weight
Robust command/control semantics25% weight
Fleet mgmt & multi-tenant concerns25% weight
Hints
  • 💡Design OTA rollouts with staged rings & rollbacks.
Potential Follow-up Questions
  • How do you detect compromised devices?
  • How to handle device clock drift?
Advertisement