Design real-time exchange data sync system

Q: Design real-time exchange data sync system

This question evaluates skills in system design for real-time, multi-source market data ingestion and live streaming, covering competencies such as schema normalization, deduplication and idempotency, time-ordering, API and client update models, partitioning and scaling, fault tolerance and backfill, observability, security, and cost management.

Q: 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.

Q: What difficulty level is this interview question?

This is a hard difficulty System Design question, commonly asked during Onsite rounds at Coinbase.

Q: What role is this question designed for?

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

Question

System Design: Real-Time Multi-Exchange Stock Data Ingestion and Live Web Page

Context

You are asked to design a production system that continuously ingests stock market data from multiple exchanges and renders an always up-to-date web page for users. Data includes trades and quotes (top-of-book), and the system must support historical queries and real-time streaming updates.

Assume: multiple heterogeneous data sources (direct exchange feeds and/or vendor APIs), variable market hours, exchange-specific schemas, intermittent network failures, and strict rate limits.

Requirements

Design the system and cover the following areas:

Data sources
- Polling vs. streaming criteria and trade-offs
- Connectors to multiple exchanges/vendors
Schema normalization
- Canonical symbol mapping and data model for trades/quotes/book updates
Deduplication and idempotency
- Event identity across venues/providers
Time handling and ordering
- Time zones, trading sessions, and out-of-order events
Caching and storage
- Hot cache, time-series storage, long-term archive
API design
- Historical REST APIs and real-time streaming (WebSocket/SSE)
Client updates
- Subscription, snapshot + delta model, resumability
Consistency and latency targets
- SLAs/SLOs, read semantics
Fault tolerance and backfill
- Retries, DLQs, replays, historical gap filling
Rate limiting
- Upstream (exchanges) and downstream (clients)
Scaling and partitioning
- Per-symbol/venue partitioning and horizontal scale
Observability
- Metrics, logs, tracing, data quality checks
Security and compliance
- Auth, transport security, secrets, market data entitlements
Cost considerations
- Storage/compute trade-offs, data retention, egress

State assumptions where needed and justify design choices.

Design real-time exchange data sync system

Quick Overview

System Design: Real-Time Multi-Exchange Stock Data Ingestion and Live Web Page

Context

Requirements

Solution

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