Predict Next-Week Streaming Engagement at Event Scale

Quick Overview

Design an ML system that predicts whether a streaming user will be active next week. Connect data and model choices to serving architecture, latency and throughput, evaluation, monitoring, failure modes, and iteration.

Predict Next-Week Streaming Engagement at Event Scale

Company: Spotify

Role: Machine Learning Engineer

Category: ML System Design

Difficulty: hard

Interview Round: Onsite

# Predict Next-Week Streaming Engagement at Event Scale Design an ML system that predicts whether a streaming user will be active next week. Discuss label choice versus duration or an engagement score, features from region, tenure, platform, sparse artists, lifetime statistics and event history, leakage prevention, and modeling at trillions-of-events scale. ### Constraints & Assumptions - Features must be available before the prediction cutoff. - The prediction must support a defined product decision. ### Clarifying Questions to Ask - What action consumes the score and what error is costlier? - How is activity labeled for new users? ### What a Strong Answer Covers - Target validity, temporal splits, scalable aggregation, baselines, sequence models, and monitoring. ### Follow-up Questions - How would threshold drift be handled? - When would a Transformer be justified?

Quick Answer: Design an ML system that predicts whether a streaming user will be active next week. Connect data and model choices to serving architecture, latency and throughput, evaluation, monitoring, failure modes, and iteration.

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Jul 31, 2026, 12:00 AM
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Predict Next-Week Streaming Engagement at Event Scale

Design an ML system that predicts whether a streaming user will be active next week. Discuss label choice versus duration or an engagement score, features from region, tenure, platform, sparse artists, lifetime statistics and event history, leakage prevention, and modeling at trillions-of-events scale.

Constraints & Assumptions

  • Features must be available before the prediction cutoff.
  • The prediction must support a defined product decision.

Clarifying Questions to Ask Guidance

  • What action consumes the score and what error is costlier?
  • How is activity labeled for new users?

What a Strong Answer Covers Guidance

  • Target validity, temporal splits, scalable aggregation, baselines, sequence models, and monitoring.

Follow-up Questions Guidance

  • How would threshold drift be handled?
  • When would a Transformer be justified?

Submit Your Answer to Earn 20XP

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