From zero to designing distributed systems — master scalability, databases, caching, and real-world system design questions.
For freshers and SDE-1 roles (TCS, Wipro, Infosys), system design is usually skipped — focus on DSA first. For SDE-2+ and FAANG roles (Amazon, Google, Microsoft), it is a mandatory round. Start learning basics in Year 3-4 of your degree.
Learn these building blocks before attempting full system design problems.
Distribute traffic across servers. Know Round Robin, Least Connections, and IP Hash strategies.
When to use MySQL vs MongoDB vs Cassandra. Understand ACID vs BASE trade-offs.
Redis, Memcached. Cache-aside, write-through, write-back patterns. Cache invalidation strategies.
Edge servers, static asset delivery, how YouTube serves video globally.
Kafka, RabbitMQ for async processing. Event-driven architecture.
Rate limiting, authentication, request routing, SSL termination at the edge.
Scale out vs scale up. Know when each applies and their limits.
Used in distributed caches and databases to evenly distribute load.
Consistency, Availability, Partition Tolerance — can only guarantee 2 of 3.
Horizontal database partitioning — by user ID, geography, or hash.
Practice designing these real-world systems — with key hints for each.
Key concepts: Base62 encoding, Redis caching, analytics tracking, expiration.
Key concepts: Fan-out on write vs read, timeline generation, celebrity problem.
Key concepts: Video upload pipeline, CDN, transcoding, chunked streaming.
Key concepts: Geospatial indexing, real-time driver matching, surge pricing.
Key concepts: WebSocket connections, message delivery guarantees, encryption.
Key concepts: Web crawling, inverted index, PageRank, query processing pipeline.
Key concepts: Cart service, inventory locking, payment processing, order saga.
Key concepts: Token bucket vs leaky bucket vs sliding window algorithms.
Ask: What is the scale? Who are the users? What are the core features? Read vs write heavy?
Calculate: DAU, QPS (queries per second), storage per day, bandwidth. Rough math is fine.
Draw boxes — Client, API Gateway, Services, Database, Cache, CDN. Don't go deep yet.
Pick 1-2 critical components and design them in detail. Show trade-offs.
What fails under load? Where are single points of failure? How do you scale?
Recap your design and highlight the key decisions you made.
Company-wise system design questions with solutions and explanations for top companies.
Explore System Design Questions