System Design roadmap

Before you start

• Backend Developer
• Data Structures and Algorithms

What you will learn

1. 1. DNS & HTTP

   How names resolve to addresses and how HTTP and HTTPS carry the web.

   • DNS — Computer Networking · DNS
   • HTTP & HTTPS — Computer Networking · HTTP & HTTPS

2. 2. SQL Foundations

   Query relational data with SELECT, filtering, sorting and joins.

   • SQL Basics — Databases · SQL Basics
   • Joins — Databases · Joins

3. 3. System Design Foundations

   Client-server basics, caching with Redis and CDNs: the first tools for building fast systems.

   • Client-Server, DNS & APIs — System Design · Client-Server, DNS & APIs
   • Caching & Redis — System Design · Caching & Redis
   • CDN — System Design · CDN

4. 4. Scaling Systems

   Scale vertically and horizontally, balance load and partition data across machines.

   • Vertical & Horizontal Scaling — System Design · Vertical & Horizontal Scaling
   • Load Balancing — System Design · Load Balancing
   • Replication, Partitioning & Sharding — System Design · Replication, Partitioning & Sharding

5. 5. Data Modeling & Scaling

   Model data with normalization and constraints, then scale it with replication, sharding, pooling and NoSQL stores.

   • Normalization & Constraints — Databases · Normalization & Constraints
   • Replication, Sharding & Pooling — Databases · Replication, Sharding & Pooling
   • NoSQL, Redis & MongoDB — Databases · NoSQL, Redis & MongoDB

6. 6. Messaging & Events

   Decouple services with queues, message brokers and events, and make consumers idempotent.

   • Queues & Message Brokers — System Design · Queues & Message Brokers
   • Event Driven Architecture — System Design · Event Driven Architecture
   • Idempotency — System Design · Idempotency

7. 7. Rate Limiting & API Gateways

   Protect and route traffic with rate limiting, API gateways and service discovery.

   • Rate Limiting — System Design · Rate Limiting
   • API Gateway & Service Discovery — System Design · API Gateway & Service Discovery

8. 8. High Availability & Disaster Recovery

   Design for failure with redundancy across regions and availability zones, and plan disaster recovery.

   • High Availability & Disaster Recovery — System Design · High Availability & Disaster Recovery
   • Regions, Availability Zones & DR — Cloud Engineering · Regions, Availability Zones & DR

9. 9. Safe Releases & SLOs

   Release with blue/green, canary and feature flags, and decide how much risk to take with SLOs and error budgets.

   • Blue/Green, Canary, Rollback & Feature Flags — DevOps · Blue/Green, Canary, Rollback & Feature Flags
   • SLI, SLO, SLA & Error Budgets — Observability · SLI, SLO, SLA & Error Budgets

10. 10. Design Trade-offs & Interviews

    Make and explain technical decisions, communicate architecture and work through classic system design interviews.

    • Technical Decisions & Tradeoffs — Engineering Leadership · Technical Decisions & Tradeoffs
    • Architecture Communication & Leadership — Engineering Leadership · Architecture Communication & Leadership
    • Classic Interview Designs — System Design · Interview Scenarios

11. 11. Distributed Systems

    Resilience patterns, consistency and consensus, and sagas with the outbox pattern for work that spans services.

    • Circuit Breaker, Retry, Backoff & Bulkhead — System Design · Circuit Breaker, Retry, Backoff & Bulkhead
    • Consistency, CAP & Consensus — System Design · Consistency, CAP & Consensus
    • Sagas & Outbox — System Design · Sagas & Outbox