Build a event-driven Chat Pipeline

Last updated: November 19, 2025

Quick Overview

Design a event-driven chat system that handles millions of requests. Discuss trade-offs in consistency, availability, and performance.

Uber
Software Engineering Fundamentals
Software Engineer
Uber
November 19, 2025
Software Engineer
Onsite
Software Engineering Fundamentals
Easy

221

6

4,366 solved


Design a event-driven chat system that handles millions of requests. Discuss trade-offs in consistency, availability, and performance.

Uber asks this during the Onsite to assess your depth in software engineering. They want to see understanding of design patterns, system architecture, and the trade-offs involved in different technical approaches.

What the Interviewer Expects
  • Explain the concept clearly with a practical example
  • Discuss when and why to apply this principle
  • Identify common mistakes and anti-patterns
  • Compare with alternative approaches
Key Topics to Cover
CI/CD pipelines
Performance optimization
System observability and debugging
Code review best practices
How to Approach This
  1. Apply SOLID principles. Single Responsibility makes code testable, Open/Closed makes it extensible.
  2. Choose data structures based on access patterns, not familiarity.
  3. Prefer immutable data and message passing over shared mutable state for concurrency.
  4. Design APIs with RESTful conventions, versioning, meaningful errors, and pagination from day one.
Possible Follow-up Questions
  • What testing strategy would you use for this component?
  • How would you measure the performance of this component in production?
  • What are the security implications of this design?
  • How would you handle backward compatibility?
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Sample Answer
Core Design Principles

In designing an event-driven chat pipeline for Uber, the Single Responsibility Principle (SRP) is crucial. Each component in the system should have one reason to change, ensuring that the chat ser...

Architecture

The architecture will leverage a microservices approach with a pub/sub messaging system (e.g., Apache Kafka) to handle event-driven communication. Each service (e.g., message service, user ser...


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