After applying online via a form, I was contacted a week later by the department director. After a half-hour chat about the business, we scheduled a tech screen. That screen was a detailed technical discussion with an engineer. I then scheduled another half-hour informal chat with the director during which I asked him some questions. We agreed to proceed on to next steps, which was an interview slate. The slate consisted of four in-depth conversations about my background, distributed systems, systems architecture, production troubleshooting, and teamwork.

The next day I had an introductory call with a recruiter. The following day, I spoke with the team manager (under the director) and the recruiter again. I got a verbal "yes" and I had an offer letter on the following business day.

Describe all the parts of a production-class distributed system following a prompt, detailing your choices along the way.