Design an Online Chess Service from Launch to Scale

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Quick Overview

Design an online chess service that starts simple and evolves with measured traffic and availability needs. Work through matchmaking, server-trusted moves and clocks, retries and reconnects, simultaneous-ownership risks, timeout correctness, fairness, failure recovery, and evidence that justifies each scaling step.

Design an Online Chess Service from Launch to Scale

Company: OpenAI

Role: Software Engineer

Category: System Design

Difficulty: medium

Interview Round: Onsite

Overview: Design an online chess service that starts simple and evolves with measured traffic and availability needs. Work through matchmaking, server-trusted moves and clocks, retries and reconnects, simultaneous-ownership risks, timeout correctness, fairness, failure recovery, and evidence that justifies each scaling step.

Read the full OpenAI Software Engineer interview experience this question came from

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OpenAI
Jul 17, 2026
mediumSoftware EngineerOnsiteSystem Design
16
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