When preparing for a system design interview at Airbnb, candidates should be ready to discuss designing scalable, reliable, and user-centric systems with a focus on hospitality, search, and booking services. Here are some of the top system design interview questions commonly asked at Airbnb:

Design a Property Booking System

Candidates are expected to discuss the architecture needed to support property listings, search functionality, booking reservations, and payment processing. Key points include handling high traffic, ensuring data consistency, managing availability, and providing a seamless user experience.

Design a Search and Recommendation System

This question tests the ability to design a system that can provide personalized search results and recommendations for properties based on user preferences, location, and other factors. Important considerations include data indexing, real-time search, machine learning models, and scalability.

Design a Scalable Payment Processing System

Candidates need to explain how they would build a secure and scalable payment processing system for handling transactions between guests and hosts. Key aspects include handling transactions, ensuring security and fraud detection, managing payment gateways, and providing a seamless user experience.

Design a Messaging System Between Guests and Hosts

This question involves creating a system that facilitates communication between guests and hosts. Important considerations include real-time messaging, data storage, ensuring privacy and security, and handling high volumes of messages.

Design a Review and Rating System

Candidates should discuss how they would design a system to handle reviews and ratings for properties and hosts. Key points include data storage, preventing fraud, ensuring authenticity, and providing a reliable and scalable system.

Design a Scalable Image Storage and Serving System

This question tests the ability to design a system for storing and serving images of properties efficiently. Important aspects include image compression, storage solutions, CDN integration, and ensuring fast load times.

Design a Dynamic Pricing System for Property Listings

Candidates need to design a system that adjusts property prices dynamically based on demand, location, seasonality, and other factors. Key considerations include real-time data processing, machine learning models, and ensuring fairness and transparency.

Design a Location-Based Search System

This involves creating a system that allows users to search for properties based on location and other filters. Important considerations include geospatial indexing, efficient query processing, and providing accurate and relevant search results.

Design a Fraud Detection System

Candidates should discuss how they would design a system to detect and prevent fraudulent activities within the platform. Key points include real-time data analysis, machine learning models for anomaly detection, integrating with existing systems, and ensuring minimal false positives.

Design a Scalable Logging and Monitoring System

This question tests the ability to design a system that collects, stores, and analyzes logs from various services to monitor the health and performance of the platform. Important considerations include data collection, storage solutions, real-time processing, alerting mechanisms, and scalability.

These questions reflect Airbnb’s emphasis on creating a seamless and trustworthy user experience, as well as their need for scalable and reliable systems to support their global operations. Preparing for these questions involves understanding the technical aspects of system design, scalability challenges, and creating robust, user-centric solutions that can handle large-scale operations efficiently.