System Design Mastery
From single-server apps to planet-scale distributed systems. Build the mental models and design instincts that separate senior engineers from everyone else.
First principles of system design
Before you can design systems, you need to reason about them. This level builds the mental models that every system design conversation assumes: scala...
How data moves between systems
Every distributed system is built on top of a network. Understanding DNS, CDNs, load balancers, reverse proxies, and modern protocols gives you the vo...
Where state lives
The hardest problems in system design are data problems. Choosing the right database, designing schemas for scale, understanding replication and parti...
Making systems fast
Caching is the most common performance optimization in system design, and the most commonly misunderstood. This level covers caching fundamentals, inv...
How services talk to each other
Modern systems are composed of services that need to communicate. REST, GraphQL, gRPC, message queues, and event-driven patterns each solve different ...
Building blocks of modern infrastructure
Senior engineers don't just know databases and caches — they know the full catalog of infrastructure components. Containers, object storage, search en...
Recurring solutions to common problems
Patterns are a shared vocabulary for design decisions. Event-driven architecture, CQRS, domain-driven design, clean architecture, deployment patterns,...
Structuring systems at scale
How do you decompose a monolith? When are microservices the right call? What about serverless? This level covers architectural styles, service decompo...
When physics gets in the way
Distributed systems are where theory meets reality. CAP theorem, consensus algorithms, distributed clocks, distributed transactions, CRDTs, consistent...
Systems that survive failure
Everything fails. The question is whether your system fails gracefully. Rate limiting, circuit breakers, back-pressure, observability, chaos engineeri...
Processing data at scale
When data grows beyond what a single database can handle, you need pipelines. Batch processing, stream processing, event sourcing, CQRS, change data c...
Protecting systems and data
Security is not a feature — it is a constraint that shapes every design decision. Authentication at scale, authorization patterns, encryption, network...
Putting it all together
Everything you have learned converges here. A structured framework for system design interviews, followed by seven complete design exercises: URL shor...
Mastering the meta-game
Architecture is not just about technology — it is about decisions. Cloud cost estimation, migration strategies, Conway's Law, technology decision-maki...