Code Room
System designHardsd-p045
Subject RealtimeLevel Senior–Staff~45 minCommon in Distributed systems interviewsIndustries Technology

Question

Design a real-time bidding ad exchange: when a page loads, auction the ad slot among bidders and return a winning ad within ~100ms.

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.