hard
Design an Online Auction
Run 50 million live eBay-style auctions: order every bid strictly per auction, push the price to watchers live, and close each auction exactly once.
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eBay system design interview questions
2 questions on this site are reported in eBay software engineer interviews. Each has a full reference design (requirements, back-of-envelope numbers, components, user flows and deep dives with interviewer follow-ups). Each one can be walked through turn by turn and then sat as a mock. Patterns covered: contention, compare-and-set, durable-timers, real-time, bidding, shopping-cart, inventory, caching, saga, aggregation.
Attribution comes from public interview guides and candidate reports, not from eBay. It indicates where a question has been asked, nothing more.
eBay questions
hard
Design Amazon
A 500 M-product marketplace: product pages at 100 k views/s, carts that never lose an item, and Prime Day checkout without overselling.
How to prepare for the eBay system design interview
Large-company loops run 45 to 60 minutes, expect numbers, and spend most of the time on deep dives. Walk through a question to see how a strong candidate paces the hour, sit the same question as a mock until you can produce the requirements, the estimates and the design without looking, then read the interview framework guide for how to structure the hour. The other questions on the site teach patterns that show up in eBay interviews under different names.
- Design a URL Shortenerkey-generation · caching · cdn
- Design Slackreal-time · websockets · fan-out
- Design a Payment Systemconsistency · idempotency · ledger
- Design a News Feedfan-out · ranking · caching
- Design YouTubetranscoding · cdn · adaptive-bitrate
- Design Google Mapsgeospatial · routing · graphs
- Design a Matchmaking Systemqueues · scheduling · latency
- Design Ubergeospatial · matching · streaming
- Design a Notification Systemfan-out · multi-channel · idempotency
- Design Google Docscrdt · operational-transform · websockets
- Design an LLM Inference Servicegpu-batching · streaming · scheduling
- Design ChatGPTstreaming · tool-calling · context-management
- Design a Distributed Cacheconsistent-hashing · eviction · replication
- Design a Web Crawlerfrontier · politeness · dedupe
- Design a Rate Limiteralgorithms · counters · redis
- Design Dropboxchunking · dedupe · sync
- Design Ticketmasterinventory · reservations · locking
- Design Search Autocompletetries · ranking · caching
- Design an Ad Click Aggregatorstream-processing · windowing · exactly-once
- Design a Distributed Job Schedulerscheduling · leases · idempotency
- Design a Stock Exchangeorder-book · determinism · event-sourcing
- Design a Project-to-Contractor Matching Systemrecommendations · ranking · marketplace
- Design Instagrammedia-pipeline · object-storage · fan-out
- Design WhatsApppersistent-connections · store-and-forward · end-to-end-encryption
- Design Netflixcdn · proactive-caching · adaptive-bitrate
- Design Yelpgeospatial-index · search · ranking
- Design a Real-Time Leaderboardsorted-sets · ranking · sharding
- Design a Distributed Key-Value Storeconsistent-hashing · quorum-replication · conflict-resolution
- Design a Unique ID Generatorid-generation · clocks · leases
- Design LeetCodesandboxing · job-queue · untrusted-code
- Design Airbnbavailability-search · inventory · double-booking
- Design a Distributed Message Queueappend-only-log · partitioning · replication
- Design a Metrics and Monitoring Systemtime-series · compression · cardinality
- Design Tindergeo-sharding · recommendations · bloom-filters
- Design Redditcomment-trees · voting · ranking
- Design DoorDashstate-machine · dispatch · eta-prediction
- Design AWS Step Functionsworkflow-orchestration · event-sourcing · durable-timers
- Design Apache Airflowworkflow-orchestration · dag-scheduling · backfills
- Design Zapierworkflow-orchestration · polling · webhooks
- Design Live Commentsbroadcast · pub-sub · sse
- Design a Top-K Heavy Hitters Serviceheavy-hitters · count-min-sketch · sliding-windows
- Design Zoomwebrtc · sfu · real-time-media
- Design Google Searchinverted-index · scatter-gather · tail-latency
- Design Spotifyprefetching · licensing · offline
- Design Gmailsmtp-ingress · spam-filtering · per-user-sharding
- Design a Large File Distribution Systempeer-to-peer · chunking · bandwidth
- Design a Recommendation Systemrecommendations · ranking · vector-search
- Design a Distributed Lock Serviceconsensus · leases · fencing-tokens
- Design an Object Storage Serviceerasure-coding · range-partitioning · durability
- Design Google Calendarrecurrence · time-zones · fan-out
- Design a Code Deployment Systemdeployment · canary · reconciliation
- Design a Distributed Logging Systemlog-aggregation · inverted-index · tiered-storage
- Design Twitchlive-video · low-latency · transcoding
- Design a Price Trackeradaptive-scheduling · change-detection · time-series
- Design Stravageospatial · async-pipeline · spatial-matching
- Design Post Searchsearch · real-time · privacy
- Design Figmamultiplayer · last-writer-wins · websockets
- Design a Load Balancerload-balancing · networking · consistent-hashing
- Design a RAG Systemrag · vector-search · hybrid-search
- Design a CDNcdn · anycast · tiered-cache
- Design an API Gatewayapi-gateway · authentication · control-plane
- Design a Social Graphgraph · sharding · in-memory
- Design an Ad Serving Systemauctions · budget-pacing · ranking
- Design GitHubgit · replication · quorum
- Design Venmoledger · sharding · hot-keys
- Design a Multiplayer Game Backendreal-time · udp · game-servers
- Design TikTokshort-video · prefetch · session-ranking
- Design Google Newsclustering · ingestion · ranking
- Design an A/B Testing Platformexperimentation · hashing · statistics
- Design GitHub Copilotlatency-budget · cancellation · prefix-caching
- Design Nearby Friendsreal-time · pub-sub · fan-out
- Design a Fraud Detection Systemfraud · feature-store · stream-processing
- Design Pastebinobject-storage · expiry · caching
- Design a Webhook Delivery Systemwebhooks · retries · isolation
- Design Pinterestrandom-walks · visual-search · deduplication
- Design a Vector Databasevector-search · ann-indexes · quantisation
- Design a Content Moderation Systemmoderation · perceptual-hashing · review-queues
- Design Robinhoodmarket-data · order-management · ledger
- Design a Flight Booking Systemfan-out · caching · saga
- Design a Container Orchestratorscheduling · reconciliation · consensus
- Design Discordreal-time · fan-out · actors
Questions people ask about the eBay system design interview
What system design questions does eBay ask?
Questions reported in eBay system design interviews include Online Auction and Amazon. Between them they test contention, compare and set, durable timers, real time, bidding and shopping cart. The reports come from public interview guides and candidate accounts, not from eBay, so practise the patterns rather than memorising one list.
How do I prepare for the eBay system design interview?
Practise the questions reported there out loud, under a 45-minute clock: requirements with numbers first, then estimates, a high-level design, and deep dives into the two or three hardest parts. Start with Online Auction: watch a strong candidate answer it turn by turn, then sit it yourself. Then cover the patterns the round leans on (contention, compare and set, durable timers and real time) with one more question each.