A structured roadmap to master system design interviews for top tech companies (Google, AWS, Microsoft, Netflix, Apple, Meta)
Transform from a developer who writes code to an engineer who designs systems — understanding the "why" behind every architectural decision.
- Theory First: Understand concepts deeply before memorizing solutions
- Trade-off Thinking: Every decision has pros and cons — know them
- Progressive Complexity: Build mental models from simple to complex
- Practice with Purpose: Mock interviews with real company-style problems
| Phase | Focus |
|---|---|
| Phase 1 | Fundamentals & Building Blocks |
| Phase 2 | Core Distributed Systems Concept |
| Phase 3 | Data Systems Deep Dive |
| Phase 4 | Real-World System Designs |
| Phase 5 | Advanced Topics & Mock Interview |
On going mark: [👈], Already done mark: [💯]
Master the vocabulary and basic components that every system uses.
- 1.1 How the Internet Works 👈
- 1.2 HTTP/HTTPS Deep Dive
- 1.3 TCP vs UDP — When to Use What
- 1.4 WebSockets & Long Polling
- 1.5 DNS — The Phone Book of the Internet
- 2.1 REST API Design Principles
- 2.2 GraphQL — When and Why
- 2.3 gRPC — High Performance Communication
- 2.4 API Gateway Pattern
- 2.5 Rate Limiting & Throttling
- 3.1 SQL vs NoSQL — The Right Tool for the Job
- 3.2 Database Indexing — How and Why
- 3.3 ACID vs BASE — Consistency Models
- 3.4 Caching Strategies
- 3.5 Blob Storage & CDN
Understand how systems scale and stay reliable.
- 4.1 Vertical vs Horizontal Scaling
- 4.2 Load Balancing — Algorithms & Strategies
- 4.3 Database Replication
- 4.4 Database Sharding / Partitioning
- 4.5 Consistent Hashing
- 5.1 CAP Theorem — The Fundamental Trade-off
- 5.2 Replication Strategies (Leader-Follower, Multi-Leader, Leaderless)
- 5.3 Consensus Algorithms (Raft, Paxos basics)
- 5.4 Failure Detection & Heartbeats
- 5.5 Circuit Breaker Pattern
- 6.1 Strong vs Eventual Consistency
- 6.2 Distributed Transactions (2PC, Saga)
- 6.3 Idempotency — Why It Matters
- 6.4 Vector Clocks & Versioning
- 6.5 Conflict Resolution Strategies
- 7.1 Message Queues — Kafka vs RabbitMQ vs SQS
- 7.2 Event-Driven Architecture
- 7.3 Pub/Sub Pattern
- 7.4 Task Queues & Background Jobs
- 7.5 Stream Processing Basics
Master the systems that store and process your data.
- 8.1 How Databases Store Data (B-Trees, LSM Trees)
- 8.2 Query Optimization
- 8.3 Connection Pooling
- 8.4 Database Locking & Isolation Levels
- 8.5 Time-Series Databases
- 9.1 Redis Deep Dive
- 9.2 Cache Invalidation Strategies
- 9.3 Elasticsearch — Full-Text Search
- 9.4 Distributed Caching
- 9.5 Cache-Aside vs Read-Through vs Write-Through
- 10.1 MapReduce Concept
- 10.2 Data Lakes vs Data Warehouses
- 10.3 Batch vs Real-Time Processing
- 10.4 OLTP vs OLAP
- 10.5 Data Partitioning Strategies
Apply everything by designing real systems.
- 11.1 Design Twitter/X
- 11.2 Design Instagram
- 11.3 Design Facebook News Feed
- 11.4 Design WhatsApp/Messenger
- 11.5 Design Notification System
- 12.1 Design YouTube
- 12.2 Design Netflix
- 12.3 Design Spotify
- 12.4 Design Google Drive/Dropbox
- 12.5 Design Image Hosting (Imgur)
- 13.1 Design Amazon E-Commerce
- 13.2 Design Uber/Lyft
- 13.3 Design Ticketmaster
- 13.4 Design URL Shortener (TinyURL)
- 13.5 Design Rate Limiter
Polish your skills and practice under pressure.
- 14.1 Microservices vs Monolith
- 14.2 Service Mesh
- 14.3 CQRS & Event Sourcing
- 14.4 Multi-Region Architecture
- 14.5 Zero Downtime Deployments
- 15.1 Logging at Scale
- 15.2 Distributed Tracing
- 15.3 Metrics & Monitoring
- 15.4 Alerting Strategies
- 15.5 Chaos Engineering Basics
- 16.1 Interview Framework (How to Approach Any Problem)
- 16.2 Estimation & Back-of-Envelope Calculations
- 16.3 Common Mistakes to Avoid
- 16.4 Company-Specific Focus Areas
- 16.5 Full Mock Interview Sessions
All examples and code implementations will be in:
- Java — Enterprise patterns, Spring ecosystem
- Go — High-performance services, cloud-native patterns
Phase 1: ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ 0/15
Phase 2: ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ 0/20
Phase 3: ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ 0/15
Phase 4: ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ 0/15
Phase 5: ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ 0/15
Total: 0/80 topics completed
Last Updated: 2025-02-03