System Design Interview: Design Uber w/ a Ex-Meta Staff Engineer
2 min read
6 months ago
Published on Apr 22, 2024
This response is partially generated with the help of AI. It may contain inaccuracies.
Table of Contents
Step-by-Step Tutorial: Designing Uber System
1. Understand the Requirements:
- Identify the functional requirements of the system, such as users inputting start and destination locations to get an estimated fare, requesting a ride, and drivers accepting or denying ride requests.
- Determine non-functional requirements like low latency, consistency of matching, high availability, and handling high throughput surges.
2. Define Core Entities and API:
- Core entities include the location entity for drivers and people entity for users.
- APIs like getting fare estimates, requesting rides, driver acceptance, and navigation to pick-up/drop-off locations need to be designed.
3. High-Level Design:
- Use AWS API Gateway to route requests to microservices like Ride Service for fare estimates and Matching Service for driver-rider matching.
- Implement a third-party mapping service like Google Maps for estimating ride prices.
- Utilize a primary database to persist ride data and a separate service for asynchronous processes like matching.
4. Deep Dive - Low Latency Matching:
- Optimize location services using geospatial indexes like Quad Trees or GeoHashing to efficiently query driver locations.
- Implement a distributed lock mechanism using Redis or DynamoDB to ensure drivers are not double-booked.
5. Deep Dive - Consistency of Matching:
- Use logical checks within the ride matching service to prevent assigning multiple rides to a driver simultaneously.
- Employ a distributed lock or a separate database table to manage driver availability and prevent race conditions.
6. Deep Dive - Handling High Throughput Surges:
- Scale the system by introducing a ride request queue partitioned by regions to handle surges and ensure high availability.
- Consider horizontal scaling by replicating the system setup across multiple data centers to improve availability and reduce strain on the system.
7. Conclusion:
- Review and refine the design to ensure it meets all functional and non-functional requirements.
- Prepare to discuss the design decisions and optimizations made during the interview to showcase your system design skills effectively.
By following these steps and understanding the intricacies of designing a complex system like Uber, you can effectively prepare for system design interviews and demonstrate your expertise in handling real-world design challenges. Good luck with your upcoming interviews!