Design a Human Workflow Distribution System
Company: Coreweave
Role: Software Engineer
Category: System Design
Difficulty: medium
Interview Round: Onsite
Design a workflow system that distributes tasks to human workers and tracks progress until completion. The system should assign work, prevent duplicate work, handle timeouts, and expose progress to operators.
### Constraints & Assumptions
- Tasks can be completed by humans through a web UI.
- Workers may abandon or time out.
- Operators need progress tracking.
- The first version can use a centralized service and database.
### Clarifying Questions to Ask
- Are workers interchangeable or skill-based?
- Do tasks require review or multiple approvals?
- What are the SLA and throughput targets?
- Can a task be reassigned?
- What audit history is required?
### What a Strong Answer Covers
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### Follow-up Questions
- How would you prevent two workers from claiming the same task?
- How would you prioritize urgent tasks?
- How would you add quality review?
- How would you handle workers going offline mid-task?
Quick Answer: This Coreweave system design question evaluates a human workflow distribution system with queueing, assignment, and progress tracking concerns. It is useful preparation for discussing fairness, retries, state transitions, and observability in work allocation systems.