Just wrapped up my Ramp loop last month. Joining next week as a senior SWE. Wanted to write up what the system design round actually looks like since I couldn't find much detail before going in.
The design round is 60 minutes. Your interviewer is an engineer, not a recruiter. They give you a problem pretty quickly and let you drive. The one I got: design the core of a spend limits and approvals system. Very on-brand for Ramp given their product. Not a generic "design Twitter" situation.
What they're actually evaluating: Can you scope the problem fast? They don't want you to spend 20 minutes on clarifying questions. Ask 3-4 good ones and move. Do you understand data modeling at a real fintech scale? Transactions, category rules, approval workflows. Think about idempotency and what happens if an approval webhook fires twice. API design: REST vs event-driven. I went with async events for the approval flow and they pushed back a bit to see how I'd defend it. Defending your choices matters more than picking the "right" one. Failure modes. They asked specifically what happens if the approvals service goes down mid-transaction. I fumbled this a bit initially and they nudged me.
Level is roughly L5 equivalent in FAANG terms. They don't use the L-numbering publicly but you can ask during the offer call.
Comp context: my offer was $195k base, ~$250k in equity over 4 years, standard health. NYC remote. Thought it was fair for the level. They didn't move much on base but I got an equity bump on negotiation.
One thing nobody told me: bring examples from real systems you've built. They want specifics, not textbook answers. I talked about a rate limiting system I built at my last company and it landed well.
Happy to answer questions. Go time next Monday.