Design a regional surge pricing strategy
Company: OpenAI
Role: Machine Learning Engineer
Category: System Design
Difficulty: hard
Interview Round: Onsite
## 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.
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.
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