Functional Requirements — Netflix#

In Scope (State These in the Interview)#

1. Users can stream movies and TV series on mobile, tablet, and laptop
2. Users can download content for offline viewing on mobile and tablet only — expires in 30 days
3. Users can browse homepage by genre rows and search by title, cast, genre
4. Resume playback across devices — for both streaming and downloads

Out of Scope (Explicitly Excluded)#

• Top-K personalized recommendations
• Payment flow
• User login and signup
• Content upload and ingest pipeline — raw video files uploaded by internal team, processed and made available for streaming (covered in YouTube case study where upload is at massive scale and more interesting)

Out of Scope (Discuss Only If Asked)#

These come out naturally during deep dives — do not volunteer them upfront.

• Adaptive streaming — quality adjusts based on network speed (comes up in streaming deep dive)
• Free vs premium paywall and trailer streaming (comes up in API design)
• Download expiry after playback starts — stays active as long as subscription is active (comes up in download deep dive)
• Trailer vs full content as separate types in the ingest pipeline (comes up in ingest deep dive)
• Multiple profiles per account with independent watch history
• Simultaneous stream limit per account (Netflix allows 2–4 depending on plan)
• Download limit per account
• Content availability by region (geo-restrictions)
• Subtitle and audio track selection