Code RoomDelivery time estimation
HardPrep Room Coding #3534

Delivery time estimation

System designDistributed systemsSenior–Staff~50 min

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.

Clarify5:30 left
Estimate5:30 planned
Design16:30 planned
Deep dive13:30 planned
Failure9:00 planned
0:00
Which questions mattered is sealed until you submit. Telling you now would just be handing over the edge cases.