Code RoomLive courier tracking
MediumPrep Room Coding #3522

Live courier tracking

System designNetworking & APIsDistributed systemsMid–Senior~45 min

Design the live courier-tracking feature where a customer watching an order in progress sees the courier's marker move on a map in near real time, and the courier also shares ETA updates. At peak there are ~2M active deliveries being watched, each courier emits a location every 3-5 seconds, and a delivery may be watched by 1-3 people. Locations should reach the watcher within ~2-3 seconds. Describe the transport, the fan-out from one courier to its watchers, how you handle the mobile client connecting/reconnecting, and the trade-off between push frequency and battery/bandwidth.

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.

Clarify5:00 left
Estimate5:00 planned
Design15:00 planned
Deep dive12:00 planned
Failure8:00 planned
0:00
Which questions mattered is sealed until you submit. Telling you now would just be handing over the edge cases.