Code Room
System designHardsd-g416
Subject Eta predictionLevel Senior–Staff~50 minCommon in Distributed systems interviewsIndustries Technology

Question

Design the end-to-end delivery-time estimation shown to a customer at checkout for food delivery: total time = restaurant prep + courier-to-restaurant travel + wait + restaurant-to-customer travel, where the courier isn't even assigned yet. You must produce a single committed delivery window (e.g. '25-35 min') that's trustworthy: under-promising hurts conversion, over-promising erodes trust and triggers refunds. Millions of estimates/day, live traffic, variable kitchen speed. Describe how you compose the multi-leg estimate, how you express uncertainty as a window, and the calibration/business trade-off of the promised time.

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.

Narrate your design
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Run or narrate your approach, then ask the coach.