Location-biased place autocomplete
Design a location-biased place autocomplete/geocoding service: as a user types ('star', 'starb…'), return ranked place and address suggestions in under 50ms, biased toward the user's current location, across a global gazetteer of 500M places/addresses. Cover the text index, how location biases ranking, and the latency budget.
What a strong answer looks like
Clarify scale and constraints first. Propose a clean component breakdown, then go deep on the hard parts (data model, bottlenecks, consistency, failure modes) and name the trade-offs you are making.
Clarify4:00 left
Estimate4:00 planned
Design11:30 planned
Deep dive9:30 planned
Failure6:00 planned
Which questions mattered is sealed until you submit. Telling you now would just be handing over the edge cases.
Run or narrate your approach, then ask the coach.