HardSystem designSystem design20 min to answer

Design a permission system for an enterprise AI application.

Asked at

ElevenLabs

1Give yourself 20 minutes

2Answer out loud, not in your head

3Then compare with the answer below

Stuck? Show a way to structure it+

01Clarify objective, users, constraints, and failure tolerance.
02Cover RBAC or ABAC, resource hierarchy, audit, least privilege in a causal structure.
03Compare at least two credible approaches.
04Specify evaluation, rollout, monitoring, and rollback.

Reference answer

strong answer

I would begin by defining the target outcome and acceptable failure boundary. For Authorization design, I would analyze RBAC or ABAC, resource hierarchy, audit, least privilege, compare alternatives on quality, latency, cost, and risk, and validate on representative slices before a monitored rollout.

RBAC or ABAC
resource hierarchy
audit
least privilege

Requires scenario-specific numbers
Should include relevant personal experience

alternative answer

I would start with the riskiest assumption in Authorization design, create the cheapest discriminating experiment, then use the evidence to choose an architecture and release threshold.

experimentation
risk-first sequencing
decision clarity

Needs deeper implementation detail

Grade yourself

RBAC or ABAC

weight 30%

StrongExplains RBAC or ABAC with mechanisms, trade-offs, and validation.

WeakNames RBAC or ABAC without operational implications.

resource hierarchy

weight 25%

StrongExplains resource hierarchy with mechanisms, trade-offs, and validation.

WeakNames resource hierarchy without operational implications.

audit

weight 25%

StrongExplains audit with mechanisms, trade-offs, and validation.

WeakNames audit without operational implications.

least privilege

weight 20%

StrongExplains least privilege with mechanisms, trade-offs, and validation.

WeakNames least privilege without operational implications.

Then expect these follow-ups

Which assumption is most likely to invalidate your approach?
Tests: depth
What would you measure offline and in production?
Tests: evaluation
How would your answer change with one-tenth the data or compute?
Tests: adaptability

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