PracHub
QuestionsPremiumLearningGuidesCheatsheetNEWCoaches
|Home/Analytics & Experimentation/DoorDash

Design DoorDash Marketplace Experiments

Last updated: Mar 29, 2026

Quick Overview

This question evaluates a data scientist's competency in experiment and quasi-experiment design, causal inference, metric definition, and judgment about multi-sided marketplace trade-offs including customer trust, ad revenue versus restaurant ROI, cannibalization, and cross-unit spillovers.

  • hard
  • DoorDash
  • Analytics & Experimentation
  • Data Scientist

Design DoorDash Marketplace Experiments

Company: DoorDash

Role: Data Scientist

Category: Analytics & Experimentation

Difficulty: hard

Interview Round: Onsite

You are interviewing for a Data Scientist role at a food-delivery marketplace such as DoorDash. The marketplace has three sides: customers, restaurants, and advertisers/sponsored listings. For each scenario below, describe: - the product objective and the decision you are trying to make, - the most appropriate experiment or quasi-experiment design, - the unit of randomization, - the primary metric, secondary metrics, and guardrails, - how you would handle interference, seasonality, and selection bias, - and what results would make you launch or reject the change. Scenarios: 1. **Auto-apply credits at checkout** The app can automatically use a customer's existing credits during checkout. The team wants to change the current experience so credits are applied by default more aggressively. How would you test whether this is a good change? 2. **Duplicate restaurant listings in search** Sometimes the top organic restaurant result and the sponsored restaurant are the same merchant, so the customer sees two nearly identical listings in the same search results page. Is this good or bad for the marketplace? If you want to change the experience, how would you test it? 3. **Restaurant promotions** Restaurants can currently opt into a fixed promotion such as "$5 off $30". - How would you increase restaurant adoption of this promotion? - Suppose you introduce a self-serve tool that lets restaurants customize promotions, for example "$3 off $15" or "$10 off $50". How would you design and evaluate this feature? - If you had to compare the existing fixed "$5 off $30" option against the new customizable-promotion option, how would you run the test and what would success look like? Your answer should reflect common marketplace issues such as customer trust, ad revenue tradeoffs, restaurant ROI, cannibalization, and cross-unit spillovers.

Quick Answer: This question evaluates a data scientist's competency in experiment and quasi-experiment design, causal inference, metric definition, and judgment about multi-sided marketplace trade-offs including customer trust, ad revenue versus restaurant ROI, cannibalization, and cross-unit spillovers.

Related Interview Questions

  • Evaluate Biker Feature Success - DoorDash (hard)
  • How would you test product changes? - DoorDash (hard)
  • How to test bike delivery? - DoorDash (medium)
  • Investigate LA successful orders drop - DoorDash (easy)
  • How would you diagnose a completed orders drop? - DoorDash (easy)
DoorDash logo
DoorDash
Feb 10, 2026, 12:00 AM
Data Scientist
Onsite
Analytics & Experimentation
7
0
Loading...

You are interviewing for a Data Scientist role at a food-delivery marketplace such as DoorDash. The marketplace has three sides: customers, restaurants, and advertisers/sponsored listings. For each scenario below, describe:

  • the product objective and the decision you are trying to make,
  • the most appropriate experiment or quasi-experiment design,
  • the unit of randomization,
  • the primary metric, secondary metrics, and guardrails,
  • how you would handle interference, seasonality, and selection bias,
  • and what results would make you launch or reject the change.

Scenarios:

  1. Auto-apply credits at checkout The app can automatically use a customer's existing credits during checkout. The team wants to change the current experience so credits are applied by default more aggressively. How would you test whether this is a good change?
  2. Duplicate restaurant listings in search Sometimes the top organic restaurant result and the sponsored restaurant are the same merchant, so the customer sees two nearly identical listings in the same search results page. Is this good or bad for the marketplace? If you want to change the experience, how would you test it?
  3. Restaurant promotions Restaurants can currently opt into a fixed promotion such as " 5off5 off 5off 30".
    • How would you increase restaurant adoption of this promotion?
    • Suppose you introduce a self-serve tool that lets restaurants customize promotions, for example " 3off3 off 3off 15" or " 10off10 off 10off 50". How would you design and evaluate this feature?
    • If you had to compare the existing fixed " 5off5 off 5off 30" option against the new customizable-promotion option, how would you run the test and what would success look like?

Your answer should reflect common marketplace issues such as customer trust, ad revenue tradeoffs, restaurant ROI, cannibalization, and cross-unit spillovers.

Solution

Show

Comments (0)

Sign in to leave a comment

Loading comments...

Browse More Questions

More Analytics & Experimentation•More DoorDash•More Data Scientist•DoorDash Data Scientist•DoorDash Analytics & Experimentation•Data Scientist Analytics & Experimentation
PracHub

Master your tech interviews with 7,500+ real questions from top companies.

Product

  • Questions
  • Learning Tracks
  • Interview Guides
  • Resources
  • Premium
  • For Universities
  • Student Access

Browse

  • By Company
  • By Role
  • By Category
  • Topic Hubs
  • SQL Questions
  • Compare Platforms
  • Discord Community

Support

  • support@prachub.com
  • (916) 541-4762

Legal

  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of Service
  • About Us

© 2026 PracHub. All rights reserved.