Design a regional surge pricing strategy
Overview
This question evaluates skills in designing real-time surge pricing systems, assessing competencies in machine learning modeling, control and pricing logic, data engineering, operational robustness, explainability, and monitoring within the System Design domain.
OpenAI
Dec 15, 2025, 12:00 AM
Machine Learning Engineer
Onsite
System Design
0
0
Scenario
You operate a ride-hailing platform. You need to design a system that sets surge multipliers (dynamic pricing) for a given region.
Task
Design:
- A pricing strategy that balances rider experience, driver supply, and marketplace efficiency.
- A production system that computes and applies surge in near real time.
Requirements
- Update every 1–5 minutes.
- Prevent extreme volatility (surge spikes/flapping).
- Be robust to fraud and sudden demand shocks (events, weather).
- Provide explainability and monitoring.
Deliverables
- Modeling approach and control logic.
- Data inputs and architecture.
- Metrics and experimentation plan.
- Safety constraints and edge cases.
Solution
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