Design product catalog service
Overview
This question evaluates a candidate's competence in large-scale system design, relational data modeling, API design, search and indexing, caching strategies, and consistency management for a read-heavy e-commerce product catalog.
Instacart
Aug 4, 2025, 10:55 AM
Software Engineer
Onsite
System Design
0
0
System Design: Product Catalog Service for an E-commerce Platform
Context
You are designing the product catalog service for a large consumer e-commerce platform with millions of SKUs and a hierarchical category tree (e.g., Grocery > Produce > Berries). The system is read-heavy, supports frequent merchant updates and bulk imports, and powers product detail pages, category browsing, and search.
Requirements
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APIs
- CRUD for products, categories, and variants/SKUs.
- Full-text search with filtering, sorting, pagination, and faceting.
- Bulk import (asynchronous), with job tracking and idempotency.
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Data Model
- Relational schema as the source of truth (PostgreSQL/MySQL).
- Category hierarchy modeled via a self-join.
- Many-to-many product–category mapping, support for variants, attributes, media, and brands.
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Non-Functional
- Scalability for high read QPS and periodic write spikes (e.g., bulk imports, price updates).
- Caching strategy (object cache, edge cache, search engine) and invalidation.
- Consistency across the relational DB, cache, and search index; read-your-writes for admins.
Deliverables:
- Define high-level API endpoints (CRUD, search, bulk import) with request/response examples.
- Propose a relational schema including a self-join for category hierarchies.
- Discuss scalability, caching, and consistency strategies.
Solution
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