Design a ride-sharing platform like Uber or Lyft. Handle real-time driver location tracking, rider-driver matching, ETA computation, surge pricing, trip management, and payments at the scale of millions of concurrent rides.
What to design
What are the core functional requirements for a ride-sharing platform?
What are the non-functional requirements? Consider real-time location updates, matching latency, availability, and scale.
Design the core APIs — ride request, driver location updates, trip lifecycle, and fare estimation.
What databases would you use for trips, locations, user profiles, and payments?
How would you store and query driver locations efficiently for finding nearby available drivers?
How would you design the matching algorithm to pair riders with the best available driver?
How would you compute accurate ETAs for pickup time and trip duration?
How would you design the trip lifecycle and ensure no ride is lost in a failure scenario?
How would you implement surge pricing (dynamic pricing) based on supply and demand?
How would you calculate fares and handle payments reliably?