Architecture Articles

  • designing-our-new-messaging-system-title-card

    Rebuilding messaging: How we designed our new system

    June 15, 2020

    Co-authors: Tyler Grant, Armen Hamstra, Cliff Snyder Over the last five years, the number of messages sent on LinkedIn has quadrupled. Whether it’s to connect with former colleagues or discuss new opportunities, messaging is core to how our members connect on the platform. As LinkedIn grew, our original email-based messaging system expanded and evolved to not...

  • diagram-showing-the-architecture-of-identity-services

    How we reduced latency and cost-to-serve by merging two systems

    April 22, 2020

    Co-authors: Xiang Zhang, Estella Pham, and Ke Wu Identity services are critical systems that serve data on profile and member settings to help power many other applications at LinkedIn. In this blog post, we’ll share how we merged two layers of the identity services that handle more than half a million queries per second (QPS) that drove a 10% reduction in...

  • architecture-of-insearch

    InSearch: LinkedIn’s new message search platform

    March 17, 2020

    Co-authors: Suruchi Shah and Hari Shankar The rise of instant messaging has changed how we communicate. Compared to the back-and-forth of email, we send and receive messages at much higher volumes and speeds. In the instant conversations we have, we also expect to be able to search for important phrases, moments, or references with ease. This rapid increase in...

  • profilehighlights1

    Rebuilding the Profile Highlights System at LinkedIn

    February 27, 2019

    LinkedIn’s mission is to connect the world’s professionals to make them more productive and successful. Building an active community...

  • realtimepresence-1

    Now You See Me, Now You Don’t: LinkedIn’s Real-Time...

    January 12, 2018

    Co-authors: Akhilesh Gupta and Meng Lay Have you ever wondered how those green online indicators (or “presence indicators”) that are...

  • Early Architecture

    A Brief History of Scaling LinkedIn

    July 20, 2015

    LinkedIn started in 2003 with the goal of connecting to your network for better job opportunities. It had only 2,700 members the first...