Design the high-level system for a scalable Fresh feature used by video subscribers

Problem Statement Description

Product context: Amazon is a commerce, logistics, media, devices, and cloud company; its products include Marketplace, Prime, Prime Video, Alexa devices, ads, fulfillment, and AWS.

Amazon wants to explore a scalable Fresh experience for video subscribers, connecting an entertainment-heavy customer segment with grocery discovery, planning, and purchasing. The feature should fit naturally into a video subscriber’s workflow without disrupting viewing, while still supporting Fresh’s core needs: accurate selection, availability, delivery-slot awareness, and reliable checkout handoff.

As the Technical PM, your task is to define the high-level system for this feature. You should clarify the user journey, key product requirements, major system components, data flows, external/internal dependencies, and the trade-offs needed to operate at Amazon scale across commerce, media, logistics, and account systems.

Assume the experience may span video surfaces, Fresh catalog and inventory services, personalization, cart/checkout, notifications, and fulfillment availability. The design should account for customers who are eligible or ineligible for Fresh delivery, differences in household accounts, regional availability, and the need to preserve trust in both the video and grocery experiences.

The experience should consider:

- Core user workflow from video subscriber entry point to Fresh discovery, basket creation, checkout handoff, and post-order updates

- Functional requirements for catalog relevance, inventory freshness, delivery-slot availability, pricing, substitutions, and eligibility checks

- APIs and data contracts between video clients, identity/account services, Fresh catalog, cart, checkout, payments, and fulfillment systems

- Latency, reliability, caching, graceful degradation, and failure handling when Fresh data is unavailable or stale

- Privacy, consent, personalization boundaries, household/profile handling, and secure treatment of shopping and viewing signals

- Rollout approach across devices, geographies, subscriber cohorts, and Fresh service areas

- Observability needs including funnel events, service health, inventory mismatch rates, checkout errors, and customer-impacting defects

The goal is to present a clear, technically credible high-level system design that balances customer experience, scalability, operational resilience, and Amazon’s need to connect selection and convenience across media and commerce without overcomplicating the first version.