Problem Description
Design the order-placement system for a cryptocurrency trading product.
The product enables users to place, cancel, and track crypto buy and sell orders. A critical constraint is that your company does not operate its own matching engine; instead, it routes orders to one or more external, third-party matching venues or exchanges. These external venues may expose diverse APIs or communication protocols.
The system must support the following core functionalities and characteristics:
- Order Types: Handle both market and limit orders.
- Order Lifecycle Management: Facilitate submission, cancellation, and real-time status tracking of orders.
- Multi-Venue Integration: Seamlessly integrate with and route orders to multiple external matching venues.
- Pre-Trade Checks: Implement balance checks and fund reservation mechanisms prior to order submission.
- Post-Trade Processing: Process execution reports, manage partial fills, handle failed orders, and ensure robust reconciliation.
- Non-Functional Requirements: Achieve high availability, ensure correctness, maintain auditability, and provide low-latency order handling.
Candidates should be prepared to discuss the design across various dimensions, including APIs, data models, core services, order state transitions, routing logic, failure handling strategies, scaling considerations, observability, and the inherent trade-offs involved in such a system.
AI interview prep
Core dilemma
Balancing the need for low-latency, high-throughput order processing with the complexities of integrating multiple, potentially inconsistent, external venues, while maintaining strict financial correctness, auditability, and high availability.
3 tradeoffs and 3 stress tests locked
Interview prep
Unlock the interviewer X-Ray rubric, tradeoff matrix, stress tests, clarifying questions, and key concepts.
Problem Description
Design the order-placement system for a cryptocurrency trading product.
The product enables users to place, cancel, and track crypto buy and sell orders. A critical constraint is that your company does not operate its own matching engine; instead, it routes orders to one or more external, third-party matching venues or exchanges. These external venues may expose diverse APIs or communication protocols.
The system must support the following core functionalities and characteristics:
- Order Types: Handle both market and limit orders.
- Order Lifecycle Management: Facilitate submission, cancellation, and real-time status tracking of orders.
- Multi-Venue Integration: Seamlessly integrate with and route orders to multiple external matching venues.
- Pre-Trade Checks: Implement balance checks and fund reservation mechanisms prior to order submission.
- Post-Trade Processing: Process execution reports, manage partial fills, handle failed orders, and ensure robust reconciliation.
- Non-Functional Requirements: Achieve high availability, ensure correctness, maintain auditability, and provide low-latency order handling.
Candidates should be prepared to discuss the design across various dimensions, including APIs, data models, core services, order state transitions, routing logic, failure handling strategies, scaling considerations, observability, and the inherent trade-offs involved in such a system.