Design Real-Time Collaborative Editing
Company: OpenAI
Role: Machine Learning Engineer
Category: System Design
Difficulty: medium
Interview Round: Technical Screen
Extend the text editor to support real-time collaboration among multiple users.
Requirements:
- Multiple users may edit the same document concurrently.
- Operations may arrive out of order.
- Conflicts must be resolved automatically.
- All users must eventually converge to the same final text.
Describe the data model, operation format, synchronization strategy, and conflict-resolution approach you would use.
Quick Answer: This question evaluates competence in distributed systems, real-time synchronization, concurrency control, data modeling, and automated conflict-resolution for collaborative editors.