Requirements
Functional
- lower level details
Non Functional
- scalability
- throughput
- storage capacity
- performance
- latency
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4DTJdHSrnI
Roadmap
Here’s a comprehensive roadmap to excel at system design interviews:
Foundation Phase (2-4 weeks)
Core Concepts Start with fundamental distributed systems concepts: scalability, reliability, availability, consistency, and partition tolerance. Learn about load balancing, caching strategies, database sharding, and replication. Understand CAP theorem and eventual consistency models.
Basic Architecture Patterns Study common patterns like microservices vs monoliths, event-driven architecture, and API design principles. Learn about message queues, pub/sub systems, and basic networking concepts including CDNs and reverse proxies.
Technical Deep Dive (4-6 weeks)
Database Systems Master SQL vs NoSQL trade-offs, ACID properties, and database scaling techniques. Study specific technologies like PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Redis, and Cassandra. Understand when to use each type of database.
Caching and Performance Learn multi-level caching strategies, cache invalidation patterns, and performance optimization techniques. Study Redis, Memcached, and application-level caching.
Message Systems and Communication Understand Apache Kafka, RabbitMQ, and gRPC. Learn about synchronous vs asynchronous communication patterns and their trade-offs.
Practice Phase (6-8 weeks)
Common System Design Problems Practice designing: URL shorteners (like bit.ly), social media feeds, chat systems, video streaming platforms, search engines, ride-sharing apps, and e-commerce platforms. Start simple and gradually add complexity.
Design Process Framework Develop a consistent approach: clarify requirements and constraints, estimate scale, design high-level architecture, dive into core components, address scalability bottlenecks, and discuss monitoring and deployment.
Mock Interviews Practice with peers or use platforms like Pramp or InterviewBit. Focus on communication skills and explaining trade-offs clearly.
Advanced Topics (2-4 weeks)
Specialized Systems Study real-world architectures from companies like Netflix, Uber, and Facebook through their engineering blogs. Learn about advanced topics like consensus algorithms (Raft, Paxos) and distributed transactions.
Monitoring and Operations Understand logging, metrics, alerting, and distributed tracing. Learn about deployment strategies and disaster recovery.
Key Resources
Books: “Designing Data-Intensive Applications” by Martin Kleppmann and “System Design Interview” by Alex Xu provide excellent theoretical and practical foundations.
Online Platforms: Use Educative.io’s system design course, watch YouTube channels like Gaurav Sen, and read engineering blogs from major tech companies.
Practice: Work through problems on LeetCode’s system design section and participate in online communities like the System Design subreddit.
Timeline and Tips
Allow 3-4 months for thorough preparation. Focus on understanding trade-offs rather than memorizing solutions. Practice explaining your thought process clearly, as communication is crucial. Start with simple designs and incrementally add complexity during interviews.
The key is consistent practice and understanding the “why” behind each design decision rather than just the “what.”
Here are the essential design patterns you should know for system design interviews:
Core Architectural Patterns
Load Balancing - Distribute incoming requests across multiple servers to prevent overload and ensure high availability. Know different algorithms like round-robin, weighted round-robin, and least connections.
Caching - Store frequently accessed data in fast storage layers. Understand cache-aside, write-through, write-behind patterns, and cache eviction policies like LRU and LFU.
Database Sharding - Horizontally partition data across multiple database instances. Know horizontal vs vertical sharding, consistent hashing for shard distribution, and handling cross-shard queries.
Replication - Create copies of data across multiple nodes for fault tolerance and read scalability. Understand master-slave, master-master, and consensus-based replication patterns.
Microservices Architecture - Break monolithic applications into smaller, independent services. Know service discovery, inter-service communication patterns, and distributed transaction handling.
Scalability Patterns
Horizontal vs Vertical Scaling - Scale out by adding more machines versus scaling up with more powerful hardware. Understand when to apply each approach.
Database Read Replicas - Separate read and write operations to different database instances to handle read-heavy workloads efficiently.
Content Delivery Networks (CDN) - Cache static content geographically closer to users to reduce latency and server load.
Message Queues - Decouple system components using asynchronous messaging. Know patterns like publish-subscribe, point-to-point, and dead letter queues.
Reliability Patterns
Circuit Breaker - Prevent cascading failures by temporarily blocking requests to failing services and allowing them time to recover.
Bulkhead - Isolate critical resources to prevent failures in one part of the system from affecting others.
Retry with Exponential Backoff - Handle transient failures by retrying requests with increasing delays to avoid overwhelming recovering services.
Graceful Degradation - Provide reduced functionality when parts of the system fail rather than complete system failure.
Data Patterns
Event Sourcing - Store all changes as a sequence of events rather than just current state, enabling audit trails and system reconstruction.
CQRS (Command Query Responsibility Segregation) - Separate read and write operations using different models optimized for each operation type.
Database Federation - Split databases by function or feature to reduce load and improve performance for specific use cases.
Consistent Hashing - Distribute data across nodes in a way that minimizes redistribution when nodes are added or removed.
Understanding these patterns and knowing when to apply them will give you a solid foundation for tackling most system design interview questions. Focus on understanding the trade-offs and use cases for each pattern rather than just memorizing definitions.
Excalidraw Data
Text Elements
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Gather Requirements
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API Design / DataBase (ER)
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High Level Design
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Deep Dive (Scaling + Edge Cases)
Element Links
R6pXjaHe: https://youtu.be/uq-JpclPQV4
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