System Design for Software Engineers

A complete hands-on journey from fundamentals to deploying a scalable real-world system.

Course Timeline: 3 Months

Format: Live sessions on Google Meet · 1:1 Mentorship · No pre-recorded content

Phase 1: Introduction

• What is System Design?
• How to approach system design problems methodically?
• What defines a "good" system?
• Real-world analogy: Amazon E-commerce breakdown

Phase 2- System Design Fundamentals

• Scalability
• Availability
• Latency Vs Throughput
• CAP Theorem (Consistency, Availability, Partition Tolerance)
• Load Balancers
• Databases
• Content Delivery Network (CDN)
• Message Queues
• Rate Limiting
• Database Indexes
• Caching Basics
• Consistent Hashing
• Database Sharding Techniques
• Proxy Servers
• Heartbeats
• Checksums
• Service Discovery
• Bloom Filters
• Gossip Protocol
• API Gateway Essential

SYSTEM DESIGN TRADE-OFFS

• Horizontal vs Vertical Scaling
• Strong vs Eventual Consistency
• Stateful vs Stateless Design
• Caching Strategies (Write-through, Write-behind, etc.)
• SQL vs NoSQL
• REST VS RPC
• Synchronous vs Asynchronous
• Batch vs Stream Processing
• Long Polling vs WebSockets
• Normalization vs Denormalization
• TCP vs UDP

ARCHITECTURAL PATTERNS

• Client-Server Architecture
• Microservices Architecture
• Serverless Architecture
• Event-Driven Architecture
• Peer-to-Peer (P2P) Architecture

Phase 3- High-Level Design Case Studies

• Design a URL Shortener like TinyURL
• File Storage System (Google Drive, Dropbox)
• Video Streaming Platform (Netflix)
• E-Commerce System (Amazon/Flipkart)
• Cab Booking App (like Uber/Ola)

𝗣𝗵𝗮𝘀𝗲 𝟰: 𝗟𝗼𝘄-𝗟𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗹 𝗗𝗲𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗻 (𝗟𝗟𝗗)

• How to approach Low-Level Design
• Object-Oriented Design Principles
• UML & Class Diagrams
• DB design, ER diagrams
• SOLID Principles for scalable code
• KISS, DRY, AGNI
• Design Patterns: Singleton, Factory, Observer & more
• 
  

𝗣𝗵𝗮𝘀𝗲 𝟱: Live Capstone Project (Self)

• Create High-Level & Low-Level Design
• Develop scalable RESTful APIs
• Design a clean, functional UI/UX
• Deploy the system (cloud or on-premise)
• Get 1:1 feedback throughout the process