← Amazon Interview Insights

Amazon·Machine Learning Engineer·Onsite - System Design / Architecture·Senior

SeniorPrefer not to say
Apr 2026

Summary

Bar Raiser round for an MLE role at Amazon. The main focus was an object-oriented design question built around an ad metrics tracking platform, which felt a bit out of left field for an ML role.

Questions Asked (1)

Q1

Design an advertiser platform for Amazon that tracks ad performance metrics. Walk through your object-oriented design.

System DesignData ModelingProduct Analytics & Metrics
Author's notes

Wasn't expecting a pure OOD question in a Bar Raiser for an ML role.

Create a free account to read the full note

AI HintsAI Generated

Suggested Approach

Start by clarifying requirements and scale, then outline the core objects (Advertiser, Campaign, Ad, Metric) and their relationships, and finally discuss how ML models consume these metrics for optimization. Emphasize extensibility, data quality, and real-time processing.

Pro tip: Show awareness of Amazon's scale and the need for near-real-time metrics by mentioning streaming architectures (e.g., Kinesis) and the trade-offs between batch and stream processing. Also, highlight how your design supports ML feedback loops for bid optimization.

1. Clarify Requirements and Scope

Ask about scale (number of advertisers, ads, events per second), latency requirements (real-time vs batch), and key metrics (impressions, clicks, conversions). This ensures the design meets business needs.

2. Identify Core Objects and Relationships

Define classes like Advertiser, Campaign, Ad, and Metric, and their associations (e.g., Advertiser has many Campaigns, Campaign has many Ads). Use inheritance for different ad types if needed.

3. Design Metric Tracking and Aggregation

Specify how metrics are collected (e.g., event streams), stored (time-series DB), and aggregated (e.g., daily, hourly). Discuss data partitioning and indexing for fast queries.

4. Integrate ML and Analytics

Explain how ML models consume metrics for tasks like click-through rate prediction, budget pacing, and anomaly detection. Highlight feedback loops where model outputs influence ad serving.

5. Address Scalability and Reliability

Discuss horizontal scaling, fault tolerance, and data consistency. Mention trade-offs between consistency and availability (CAP theorem) and how to handle late-arriving data.

Key Points to Mention

  • Use of time-series databases (e.g., DynamoDB, Timestream) for efficient metric storage and retrieval.
  • Event-driven architecture with message queues (e.g., Kafka, Kinesis) for real-time metric ingestion.
  • Data modeling for ML: feature stores, training/serving skew, and versioning of models and metrics.
  • Aggregation strategies: pre-aggregation vs on-the-fly, and handling of dimensions (e.g., by campaign, ad, geo).
  • Security and access control: ensuring advertisers only see their own data, and compliance with privacy regulations.
  • Extensibility: designing for new ad formats and metrics without major refactoring.

AI-generated suggestions, not part of the candidate's original notes. May be inaccurate — verify before relying on them.