Design food delivery order tracking like Swiggy
PremiumReal-timeEasy
- Order state machine
- SSE
- Push notifications
Quick answer
This real-time interview question asks you to design food delivery order tracking like Swiggy. Aim for a design that delivers updates to many users with low delay, then explain connections, fan-out, ordering and trade-offs. Interviewers want to see how you keep latency low, handle reconnects and stay correct under load.
The problem
Design live order tracking for a food delivery app like Swiggy, Zomato or DoorDash. After paying, the customer watches one screen with the order status, the delivery partner moving on a map and a changing ETA; the hard part is never missing or repeating a status change, even across network drops and a closed app.
The status runs placed, accepted by restaurant, being prepared, ready for pickup, picked up, nearby, delivered. The partner appears on the map once the food is picked up. If the customer leaves the app, important status changes still reach them as phone notifications.
What must the system do?
- Status timeline: The customer sees each status change, in order, with its time; no step may be skipped or shown twice.
- Partner on map: From pickup until delivery, the customer sees the partner's position, refreshed every 5 seconds.
How well must it do it?
- Latency: A status change reaches an open screen within 2 seconds.
- Reliability: A customer never misses a status change, even after losing network for minutes.
What scale should you design for?
Use these numbers in your estimates.
The scale numbers unlock with this questionUnlock
Key concepts
- Order state machine
- SSE
- Push notifications
- Location streaming
- ETA updates
- Versioned status
How you’ll practise
- Requirements
- Estimate
- Connections
- Message flow
- Delivery guarantees
- Wrap-up
Lala, personalized to you, gives a hint when you ask and reviews your design when you are ready.
What do interviewers look for?
In any real-time design round.
- Clarifies latency, ordering and delivery guarantees
- Chooses a connection model with reasons
- Explains fan-out to many receivers
- Handles reconnects, missed messages and duplicates
- Plans for hot spots and sudden traffic spikes
- States trade-offs between consistency and speed
Questions people ask about this interview question
- Which design type is this question?
- It is a real-time question. You design food delivery order tracking like Swiggy and explain your choices the way you would in an interview.
- Is this question asked at entry level?
- It is marked Easy, so it suits engineers who are new to real-time interviews. It is also a good warm-up before harder questions.
- What should I cover first?
- Start with who sends and receives updates, how fast they must arrive and what order matters. Agree on scope with the interviewer before you design anything.
- Can I practise it for free?
- It is a premium question. Sign up and unlock it once for 10 credits; it then stays unlocked. When you finish, Lala, your personalized AI mentor, can review your design for 30 credits.
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Updated · Written by the SevyDevy team