#ranking

27 ranking interview questions, asked at Meta, Google, Microsoft and 10 more companies. Last asked Sep 2026.

+1
ML design for retrieval: embeddings, hybrid search and rankingML designDesign the machine learning behind the retrieval stage of a question-answering system. Discuss how you train the embedding model, how retrieval combines dense and keyword search…
Last asked Sep 2026
+3
Design a personalized search ranking systemML designRank search results for each user's query and context so they find and book (or order) what they want, learning from clicks and conversions.
Last asked Sep 2026
+1
Design an online game leaderboardSystem designShow the top players and each player's own rank in real time as millions of scores update.
Last asked Sep 2026
Design watch-next video recommendations and derive the lossesML designDesign the "watch next" list for a large video platform: while someone watches a video, the system picks and orders the videos to offer next. This round goes deep on modeling…
Last asked Aug 2026
+2
Design permission-aware enterprise searchAI system designDesign search across every app a company uses (Drive, Confluence, Slack, Jira, GitHub, email and more) from one search box, plus an assistant that answers from the results. Nobody…
Last asked Aug 2026
Design a large-scale recommendation system end to endML designDesign a recommendation system from scratch. When a user opens a surface, it picks a short, ordered list of items out of a very large catalog that changes all the time, and it…
Last asked Jul 2026
+5
Design a news feedSystem designDesign the home feed for a social network with 1B users: posts from people you follow, ranked, fresh within seconds.
Last asked Jun 2026
Design a recommender for local sports teams and newsML designRecommend local sports teams, and the news about them, to each user. Discuss what data you collect and how it is produced, what you know about the user (location, follows…
Last asked Jun 2026
Design a driver leaderboard based on reviewsSystem designRiders review drivers after each trip. Design a leaderboard that ranks drivers by their reviews. Cover how ratings are aggregated as new reviews arrive, how rankings are stored…
Last asked Jun 2026
Design candidate search for a talent marketplaceML designDesign a system that lets a company search for candidates and ranks them for a role: how candidate profiles are represented and indexed, how a query or job description retrieves…
Last asked May 2026
Design a family-friendly listing ranking systemML designFor guests traveling with children, rank listings by how family-friendly they are, without reliable labels for 'family-friendly'.
Last asked Apr 2026
+5
Design a feed recommendation systemML designRank the items in each user's home feed so they engage more, choosing from millions of candidates within a couple of hundred milliseconds.
Last asked Apr 2026
Cold start in ranking systemsML designHow do you rank new items or serve new users that have no interaction history? Discuss content features, exploration, priors and boosting, how to move from cold to warm signals…
Last asked Mar 2026
Design a drop-off spot selector for a robotaxiML designDesign an ML system that picks where an autonomous ride-hail vehicle should drop off its passenger near the destination. Cover the candidate spots, the signals and labels you…
Last asked Mar 2026
Design a nearby places recommendation systemML designDesign the ML system that recommends places to visit (restaurants, shops, attractions) to a user in a maps or local-discovery product. The user may be on the move, so location and…
Last asked Mar 2026
Design a short-video recommendation systemML designDesign the recommendation system behind a short-video feed, where each user swipes through videos one at a time. Cover what you optimise (watch time, completion, likes, shares)…
Last asked Feb 2026
Design app recommendations for an app storeML designRecommend apps to each user on an app store's home page and in its search results. Cover candidate generation and ranking, the signals you would use (installs, uninstalls, usage…
Last asked Feb 2026
Design a notification ranking systemML designMany products send notifications to the same user: new products, friends' activity, results of advertisers' campaigns and more. Design the ML system that decides which…
Last asked Jan 2026
Design an ads ranking system with calibrated predictionsML designDesign the system that ranks ads for a user, using predicted click and conversion probabilities together with advertiser bids. Because the predictions feed an auction, they must…
Last asked Jan 2026
Design email ranking and summarization for an inboxAI system designDesign features that rank a user's incoming email by importance and summarize messages and threads with a language model. Cover signals for ranking, training labels, the…
Last asked Jan 2026
Design photo and listing quality modelsML designDesign models that score the quality of listing photos and of listings overall, so better listings can be surfaced and hosts can be told what to improve. Cover defining quality…
Last asked Jan 2026
Design app store searchML designDesign search for an app store: the user types a query and gets a ranked list of apps. Cover query understanding (spelling, intent), retrieval, ranking features and models…
Last asked Dec 2025
Design comment ranking for a news feedML designDesign the ML system that decides which comments to show, and in what order, under posts in a news feed. Discuss the objective (meaningful conversations, not only likes), the…
Last asked Dec 2025
Design an e-commerce recommendation systemML designDesign the system that recommends products to shoppers on an e-commerce site. Cover candidate generation, ranking features and model, training data from views and purchases, cold…
Last asked Sep 2025
Design a model that predicts posts a user will dislikeML designDesign a model for a news feed that predicts which posts a user would dislike or hide, so ranking can show fewer of them. Cover the labels (explicit negative feedback is rare)…
Last asked Sep 2025
+2
Design an address autofill systemML designAs a user types an address, suggest the full, valid address they mean, ranked by likelihood and personalized by location and history.
+1
Design Google NewsSystem designGather articles from thousands of publishers, group stories about the same event, and show each reader a fresh, personalized front page.