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Design a feed ranking system

UberMachine Learning Engineer · Technical Screen

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This question evaluates a candidate's competency in designing end-to-end machine-learning-based feed ranking systems, including setting ranking objectives, candidate generation and filtering, feature design, model training and serving, and operational concerns like freshness, diversity, and scalability.

Design a machine-learning-based feed ranking system for a consumer product. The system should rank candidate posts or items for a user's home feed in real time.

Discuss:

  • Product goals and ranking objectives
  • Online and offline metrics
  • Candidate generation, filtering, ranking, and re-ranking stages
  • Features and data sources
  • Model training and serving architecture
  • Handling freshness, diversity, spam, and cold start
  • Experimentation, monitoring, and failure modes
  • Latency, scalability, and reliability constraints