YOUR BRIEF
What to work through
Work through robinhood as a spoken system design interview. Start by clarifying the scope, sketch a working design and explain the trade-offs behind your choices.
- See live stock prices
- Place market and limit orders
- Cancel an order that has not filled
- See the status of one’s orders and positions
BEFORE YOU START
Constraints to discuss
- Prices reach watching users in near real time
- An order is placed at the exchange at most once, whatever the retries
- The app’s view of an order never disagrees with the exchange for long
Need a starting point?
Watch for these common gaps as you prepare:
- Calling the exchange before saving the order, so a crash leaves an order nobody knows about
- Every price server subscribing to every symbol
- Treating cancel as certain when the order may already have filled
Why this question is in the collection
These sources connect the problem to company interview reports or preparation guides. They do not guarantee what a company will ask you.