How do I approach System Design interview questions?

System Design questions require understanding of core concepts and practice. PracHub provides solutions with explanations to help you master system design interviews.

What difficulty level is this interview question?

This is a medium difficulty System Design question, commonly asked during Technical Screen rounds at Rippling.

What role is this question designed for?

This question is commonly asked for Software Engineer candidates at Rippling during technical interviews.

Design expense rules engine and return type | Rippling Interview Question

Quick Overview

This question evaluates a candidate's ability to design a scalable expense policy/rules engine for a corporate card system, testing skills in rule representation, API response modeling, conflict resolution, auditing/explanations, and performance and scalability considerations.

Design a Rules Engine for Corporate Card Expenses

Context

You are building an expense policy engine for a corporate credit-card system. Managers define policies (rules) that must be evaluated against expense transactions. Each expense is represented as a dictionary/map with string keys and string values.

Task

Design and describe an implementation for:

A rule representation that supports at least the four sample policies below and scales to hundreds of rules.
A function: evaluateRules(rules: list <rule> , expenses: list <expense> ) -> ?
Define what the function should return as an API response that downstream services and UIs can consume.
Explain conflict handling and precedence, auditing/explanations, performance and scalability, and how managers select and manage rules.
State assumptions and product clarifications you would ask before coding.

Given Policies (minimum support)

No restaurant expense over $75.
No airfare expenses.
No entertainment expenses.
No expense over $250.

The system must flag violating expenses.

Quick Overview

Task

Design and describe an implementation for:

A rule representation that supports at least the four sample policies below and scales to hundreds of rules.

A function: evaluateRules(rules: list <rule> , expenses: list <expense> ) -> ?

Define what the function should return as an API response that downstream services and UIs can consume.

Explain conflict handling and precedence, auditing/explanations, performance and scalability, and how managers select and manage rules.

State assumptions and product clarifications you would ask before coding.

Design expense rules engine and return type

Quick Overview

Design a Rules Engine for Corporate Card Expenses

Context

Task

Given Policies (minimum support)

Solution

Submit Your Answer

Design expense rules engine and return type

Quick Overview

Design a Rules Engine for Corporate Card Expenses

Context

Task

Given Policies (minimum support)

Solution

Submit Your Answer