#recommendations

17 recommendations interview questions, asked at Google, Meta, Amazon and 7 more companies. Last asked Sep 2026.

Design a people-you-may-know friend recommendation systemSystem designDesign the "people you may know" feature of a large social network: each user sees people they are not connected to yet but probably know, and can send a friend request or dismiss…
Last asked Sep 2026
+1
Friend recommendation by mutual friendsCodingRecommend friends ranked by number of mutual friends in a social graph. Reported on 1point3acres' Fireworks AI bank; reconstructed in our own words.
Last asked Sep 2026
Predict click-through rate for music recommendationsML designDesign a model that predicts whether a user will click a recommended song. Explain how you would embed songs, how you handle the different kinds of features, and how you would…
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
Design a music recommender driven by an LLM agentAI system designDesign a music recommendation product in which an LLM agent talks with the listener and suggests songs or playlists. Cover how the agent reaches the listener's history and the…
Last asked Aug 2026
Design a personalized weekly deals serviceSystem designEvery week each user gets a set of deals picked for them. Design how deals are collected, matched to each user, stored and delivered, and how the weekly run stays on time as users…
Last asked Jul 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
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
+3
Design SpotifySystem designStream music to hundreds of millions of listeners: catalog, search, playlists, smooth playback over bad networks, and offline downloads.
Last asked May 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 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
Build a recommender, then a chatbot on top of itAI system design1. Build a recommendation system from scratch: data, candidate generation, ranking, evaluation and serving. 2. Now that it exists, build a conversational interface on top of it…
Last asked Jan 2026
Design a nearby restaurant recommendation systemML designRecommend restaurants a user is likely to order from right now, given location, time of day, delivery time and their history.
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 pickup point planning for ride-hailingSystem designDesign how a ride-hailing app suggests where a rider should be picked up: candidate points near the rider, ranking them by walking distance, road access, and driver arrival time…
Last asked May 2025