System Design: Learning Path
Read in order, then practise with the system design problems.
| # | Module | You will be able to |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Interview framework | Run a structured 45-minute design interview and show senior signals |
| 2 | Back-of-envelope estimation | Turn volumes into partitions, storage, compute and cost |
| 3 | Building blocks | Pick and justify Kafka, stream engines, storage, serving stores, sketches |
| 4 | Reliability patterns | Design idempotent, replayable, observable pipelines |
| 5 | Hot keys across all systems | Detect and fix hot keys in Kafka, Spark, Flink, databases, caches and APIs, and explain the trade-off of each fix |
| 6 | Data system design patterns | Use 25 named patterns (outbox, CDC, CQRS, event sourcing, sagas, WAP, claim check, sketches, bulkheads…) and state their trade-offs |
| - | Quick reference · Printable cheatsheet | Revise the day before |
Then go deeper on architecture topics in learn/architecture.