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Independent

Grokking System Design Interview: Patterns & Mock Interviews

via Independent

Overview

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For a decade, when developers talked about how to prepare for System Design Interviews, the answer was always Grokking System Design. This is that course — updated for the current tech landscape. As AI handles more of the routine work, engineers at every level are expected to operate with the architectural fluency that used to belong to Staff engineers. That's why System Design Interviews still determine starting level and compensation, and the bar keeps rising. I built this course from my experience building global-scale distributed systems at Microsoft and Meta — and from interviewing hundreds of candidates at both companies. The failure pattern I kept seeing wasn't a lack of technical knowledge. Even strong coders would hit a wall, because System Design Interviews don't test what you can build; they test whether you can reason through an ambiguous problem, communicate ideas clearly, and defend trade-offs in real time (all skills that matter ore than never now in the AI era). RESHADED is the framework I developed to fix that: a repeatable 45-minute roadmap through any open-ended System Design problem. The course covers the distributed systems fundamentals that appear in every interview – databases, caches, load balancers, CDNs, messaging queues, and more – then applies them across 13+ real-world case studies: YouTube, WhatsApp, Uber, Twitter, Google Maps, and modern systems like ChatGPT and AI/ML infrastructure. Then put your knowledge to the test with AI Mock Interviews designed to simulate the real interview experience. Hundreds of thousands of candidates have already used this course to land SWE, TPM, and EM roles at top companies. If you're serious about acing your next System Design Interview, this is the best place to start.

Syllabus

  1. Introduction
  2. Get familiar with System Design and the course structure, including prerequisites that set the foundation for mastering System Design Interviews.
    • Introduction to Modern System Design
    • Why Every Developer Should Learn System Design
    • Course Structure for Modern System Design
  3. System Design Interviews
  4. Explore what System Design Interviews involve, including essential preparation strategies, fundamental concepts, key resources, and tips to perform well.
    • Getting Ready for the System Design Interview
    • The Do’s and Don’ts of the System Design Interview
    • System Design Interview Trap: Why Engineers Fail and Succeed
    • How Long Does It Take to Prepare for a System Design Interview?
    • System Design Mock Interviews
    • Let AI Evaluate Your System Design Interview Preparation
  5. Preliminary System Design Concepts
  6. Grasp the fundamentals of abstractions in distributed systems, focusing on network abstraction, consistency, and failure models crucial for System Design.
  7. Non-Functional System Characteristics
  8. Review key non-functional characteristics like availability, reliability, scalability, and fault tolerance in System Design.
  9. Back-of-the-Envelope Calculations
  10. Learn how to estimate resource needs like servers, storage, and bandwidth using back-of-the-envelope calculations for System Design.
  11. Building Blocks
  12. Explore the essential building blocks required for modern System Design, which will form the foundation for scalable systems later in the course.
    • Introduction to Building Blocks for Modern System Design
  13. Domain Name System
  14. Discover how DNS works and its role in System Design, including detailed insights into its design and functionality.
  15. Load Balancers
  16. Take a closer look at load balancers, their placement, and algorithms, including local and global load balancers and different tiers of load balancers.
  17. Databases
  18. Explore databases and their types, data replication, partitioning, and trade-offs essential for designing distributed systems.
  19. Key-Value Store
  20. Learn how to design a scalable key-value store, focusing on replication, versioning, and fault tolerance.
  21. Content Delivery Network (CDN)
  22. Discover CDN design, content caching strategies, consistency, and techniques for efficient content delivery.
  23. Sequencer
  24. Learn how to design a sequencer for generating unique IDs, focusing on causality and consistency in distributed systems.
  25. Distributed Monitoring
  26. Explore a distributed monitoring system’s basics, types, and metrics for effective monitoring.
  27. Monitor Server-Side Errors
  28. Learn how to design a monitoring system and visualize it for tracking server-side errors in real-time.
  29. Monitor Client-Side Errors
  30. Discover how to design a system to monitor client-side errors, ensuring robust and reliable applications.
  31. Distributed Cache
  32. Unpack the design of a distributed cache, focusing on high-level and detailed designs and evaluating its performance.
  33. Distributed Cache System Design
  34. Mock Interview
  35. Distributed Messaging Queue
  36. Examine the design of a distributed messaging queue, addressing requirements, design considerations, and performance evaluations.
  37. Pub-Sub
  38. Learn the design of a pub-sub system, focusing on how to implement and optimize this communication pattern in distributed systems.
  39. Pub-Sub System Design
  40. Mock Interview
  41. Rate Limiter
  42. Explore the design of a rate limiter, covering essential algorithms and considerations for managing traffic and ensuring system stability.
  43. Blob Store
  44. Learn how to design a blob store, focusing on scalability, storage, and performance evaluation.
  45. Blob Store System Design
  46. Mock Interview
  47. Distributed Search
  48. Step through distributed search design in stages, with a special focus on indexing, scaling, and replication.
  49. Distributed Logging
  50. Understand the importance and design of a distributed logging service, emphasizing capturing and analyzing logs across distributed systems.
  51. Distributed Task Scheduler
  52. Examine the design of a task scheduler addressing issues like prioritizing, task idempotency, queuing, and resource capacity optimization.
  53. Sharded Counters
  54. Get familiar with sharded counters and their importance, starting from high-level design and then pivoting to detailed System Design.
  55. Concluding the Building Blocks Discussion
  56. Wrap up the discussion on building blocks, evaluate your understanding using AI, and learn the RESHADED approach to tackle unseen System Design problems.
  57. Design YouTube
  58. Learn YouTube System Design, starting with requirements, high-level and detailed design, evaluation of the design, and handling real-world complexities.
  59. TikTok System Design
  60. Mock Interview
  61. Design Quora
  62. Explore the System Design of Quora incrementally by starting with key requirements and challenges in building a scalable Q&A platform.
  63. Design Google Maps
  64. Walk through the System Design of Google Maps, focusing on API design, scalability, finding optimal routes, and ETA computation.
  65. Design a Proximity Service/Yelp
  66. Take a closer look at the System Design of a proximity service like Yelp, addressing requirements like searching, scaling, and dynamic segments.
  67. Design Uber
  68. Understand how to design Uber, address requirements for ride-sharing platforms, detailed design, and fraud detection.
  69. Uber Eats System Design
  70. Mock Interview
  71. Design Twitter
  72. Learn Twitter System Design, covering aspects like user interaction, API design, caching, storage, and client-side load balancing.
  73. Design Newsfeed System
  74. Master newsfeed System Design, covering aspects like functional and non-functional requirements, storage schemas, newsfeed generation, and publishing.
    • System Design: Newsfeed System
  75. Design Instagram
  76. Explore Instagram’s System Design, covering API design, storage schema, and timeline generation using pull, push, and hybrid approaches.
  77. NewsFeed System Design
  78. Mock Interview
  79. Design a URL Shortening Service/TinyURL
  80. Decode the System Design of a URL shortening service like TinyURL, emphasizing requirements like encoding, scalability, and high readability.
    • System Design: TinyURL
  81. Design a Web Crawler
  82. Explore the System Design of a web crawler, including its key components, such as a crawler, scheduler, HTML fetcher, storage, and crawling traps handler.
    • System Design: Web Crawler
  83. Design WhatsApp
  84. Take a look at WhatsApp System Design with an emphasis on its API design, high security, and low latency of client-server messages.
  85. Facebook Messenger System Design
  86. Mock Interview
  87. Design Typeahead Suggestion
  88. Discover the typeahead suggestion System Design, covering aspects like efficient data structures and assemblers for updating suggestions.
  89. Design a Collaborative Document Editing Service/Google Docs
  90. Understand the System Design of Google Docs, using different techniques to address storage, collaborative editing, and concurrency issues.
  91. Design a Deployment System
  92. Explore the essentials of automating deployment and understand the strategies to design a code deployment system.
  93. Design a Payment System
  94. Explore the functionality and design of secure, efficient payment systems in fintech.
  95. Design a ChatGPT System
  96. Explore the design and architecture of a scalable ChatGPT-like conversational system.
  97. ChatGPT System Design
  98. Mock Interview
  99. Design a Data Infrastructure System
  100. Learn how scalable data infrastructure for AI/ML systems are designd, ensuring efficiency and reliability.
  101. LLM-Powered Customer Support Bot System Design
  102. Explore the design and functionality of an LLM-powered customer support bot.
  103. AI-Powered Code Assistant System Design
  104. Explore the design and functionality of AI-powered code assistants for developers.
  105. Lessons from System Failures
  106. Learn how to avoid failures and outages by discussing case studies of real-world, large-scale distributed systems like Facebook, AWS, etc.
  107. Concluding Remarks
  108. Reflect on key takeaways, highlight unique aspects of each Design Problem, and get pointers on the next steps to master System Design.
  109. Free System Design Lessons
  110. Master key System Design principles for scalable, reliable applications and effective interviews for free.
  111. System Design Case Studies
  112. Explore System Design case studies that reveal how top tech companies build scalable, resilient, and high-performance platforms.

Taught by

Fahim ul Haq

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