Design an online marketplace for buying and selling

Q: Design an online marketplace for buying and selling

This is a System Design interview question from eBay for Software Engineer roles. View the full question and solution on PracHub.

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Question

System Design: Online Marketplace Backend

Context

Design the backend for a two-sided online marketplace where sellers list items and buyers purchase them. Assume tens of millions of listings, millions of MAUs, and peak traffic spikes (e.g., flash sales). The system must be secure, scalable, reliable, and support global deployment.

Requirements

Core APIs and Data Model
Search and Filtering
Image Handling
Payments and Escrow
Inventory and Availability
Notifications
Fraud/Abuse Prevention
Rate Limiting
Observability
Scaling Strategies (partitioning, indexing, caching, CDN)
Consistency across Orders and Listings
Multi-Region Deployment and Disaster Recovery

Provide the architecture, key trade-offs, and rationale for each section.

Design an online marketplace for buying and selling

System Design: Online Marketplace Backend

Context

Requirements

Solution (Locked)

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