Grokking System Design Interview: Patterns & Mock Interviews

A modern approach to grokking the System Design Interview. Master distributed systems & architecture patterns for System Design Interviews and beyond. Developed by FAANG engineers. Used by 100K+ devs.

Intermediate

180 Lessons

26h

Certificate of Completion

A modern approach to grokking the System Design Interview. Master distributed systems & architecture patterns for System Design Interviews and beyond. Developed by FAANG engineers. Used by 100K+ devs.

AI-POWERED

Code Feedback
Mock Interview
Explanations
Prompt

AI-POWERED

Code Feedback
Mock Interview

This course includes

19 AI Prompts
51 AI Feedbacks
5 Playgrounds
140 Quizzes

This course includes

19 AI Prompts
51 AI Feedbacks
5 Playgrounds
140 Quizzes

Course Overview

System Design Interviews decide your level and compensation at top tech companies. To succeed, you must design scalable systems, justify trade-offs, and explain decisions under time pressure. Most candidates struggle because they lack a repeatable method. Built by FAANG engineers, this is the definitive System Design Interview course. You will master distributed systems building blocks: databases, caches, load balancers, messaging, microservices, sharding, replication, and consistency, and learn the patter...Show More

What You'll Learn

A 45-minute answer structure with RESHADED for any System Design Interview

Frame open-ended interview problems as specific requirements, constraints, and success criteria

Design scalable, reliable systems with databases, caches, load balancers, queues, and microservices

Pattern toolkit: sharding, replication, consistency models, CQRS, and event-driven design

Capacity and reliability skills: throughput and latency math, bottlenecks, SLIs and SLOs, failure handling

Communication under pressure: fast diagramming, clear trade-off narratives, effective checkpoints

Mock Interview practice with timed scenarios, model answers, and rubrics to build confidence and speed

What You'll Learn

A 45-minute answer structure with RESHADED for any System Design Interview

Show more

Course Content

1.

System Design Interviews

Explore what System Design interviews involve, including essential preparation strategies, fundamental concepts, key resources, and tips to perform well.
2.

Introduction

Get familiar with System Design and the course structure, including prerequisites that set the foundation for mastering System Design interviews.
3.

Abstractions

Grasp the fundamentals of abstractions in distributed systems, focusing on network abstraction, consistency, and failure models crucial for System Design.
4.

Non-functional System Characteristics

Take a look at the key non-functional characteristics like availability, reliability, scalability, and fault tolerance in System Design.
5.

Back-of-the-envelope Calculations

Learn how to estimate resource needs like servers, storage, and bandwidth using back-of-the-envelope calculations for System Design.
6.

Building Blocks

1 Lesson

Explore the essential building blocks required for modern System Design, which will form the foundation for scalable systems later in the course.
7.

Domain Name System

2 Lessons

Discover how DNS works and its role in System Design, including detailed insights into its design and functionality.
8.

Load Balancers

3 Lessons

Take a closer look at load balancers, their placement, and algorithms, including local and global load balancers and different tiers of load balancers.
9.

Databases

5 Lessons

Explore databases and their types, data replication, partitioning, and trade-offs essential for designing distributed systems.
10.

Key-value Store

5 Lessons

Learn how to design a scalable key-value store, focusing on replication, versioning, and fault tolerance.
11.

Content Delivery Network (CDN)

7 Lessons

Discover CDN design, content caching strategies, consistency, and techniques for efficient content delivery.
12.

Sequencer

3 Lessons

Learn how to design a sequencer for generating unique IDs, focusing on causality and consistency in distributed systems.
13.

Distributed Monitoring

3 Lessons

Explore a distributed monitoring system’s basics, types, and metrics for effective monitoring.
14.

Monitor Server-side Errors

3 Lessons

Learn how to design a monitoring system and visualize it for tracking server-side errors in real-time.
15.

Monitor Client-side Errors

2 Lessons

Discover how to design a system to monitor client-side errors, ensuring robust and reliable applications.
16.

Distributed Cache

6 Lessons

Unpack the design of a distributed cache, focusing on high-level and detailed designs and evaluating its performance.
17.

Distributed Messaging Queue

7 Lessons

Examine the design of a distributed messaging queue, addressing requirements, design considerations, and performance evaluations.
18.

Pub-sub

3 Lessons

Learn the design of a pub-sub system, focusing on how to implement and optimize this communication pattern in distributed systems.
19.

Rate Limiter

5 Lessons

Explore the design of a rate limiter, covering essential algorithms and considerations for managing traffic and ensuring system stability.
20.

Blob Store

6 Lessons

Learn how to design a blob store, focusing on scalability, storage, and performance evaluation.
21.

Distributed Search

6 Lessons

Step through distributed search design in stages, with a special focus on indexing, scaling, and replication.
22.

Distributed Logging

3 Lessons

Understand the importance and design of a distributed logging service, emphasizing capturing and analyzing logs across distributed systems.
23.

Distributed Task Scheduler

5 Lessons

Examine the design of a task scheduler addressing issues like prioritizing, task idempotency, queuing, and resource capacity optimization.
24.

Sharded Counters

4 Lessons

Get familiar with sharded counters and their importance, starting from high-level design and then pivoting to detailed System Design.
25.

Concluding the Building Blocks Discussion

4 Lessons

Wrap up the discussion on building blocks, evaluate your understanding using AI, and learn the RESHADED approach to tackle unseen System Design problems.
26.

Design YouTube

6 Lessons

Learn YouTube System Design, starting with requirements, high-level and detailed design, evaluation of the design, and handling real-world complexities.
27.

Design Quora

5 Lessons

Explore the System Design of Quora incrementally by starting with key requirements and challenges in building a scalable Q&A platform.
28.

Design Google Maps

6 Lessons

Walk through the System Design of Google Maps, focusing on API design, scalability, finding optimal routes, and ETA computation.
29.

Design a Proximity Service / Yelp

5 Lessons

Take a closer look at the System Design of a proximity service like Yelp, addressing requirements like searching, scaling, and dynamic segments.
30.

Design Uber

7 Lessons

Understand how to design Uber, address requirements for ride-sharing platforms, detailed design, and fraud detection.
31.

Design Twitter

6 Lessons

Learn Twitter System Design, covering aspects like user interaction, API design, caching, storage, and client-side load balancing.
32.

Design Newsfeed System

4 Lessons

Master newsfeed System Design, covering aspects like functional and non-functional requirements, storage schemas, newsfeed generation, and publishing.
33.

Design Instagram

5 Lessons

Explore Instagram’s System Design, covering API design, storage schema, and timeline generation using pull, push, and hybrid approaches.
34.

Design a URL Shortening Service / TinyURL

6 Lessons

Decode the System Design of a URL shortening service like TinyURL, emphasizing requirements like encoding, scalability, and high readability.
35.

Design a Web Crawler

5 Lessons

Explore the System Design of a web crawler, including its key components, such as a crawler, scheduler, HTML fetcher, storage, and crawling traps handler.
36.

Design WhatsApp

6 Lessons

Take a look at WhatsApp System Design with an emphasis on its API design, high security, and low latency of client-server messages.
37.

Design Typeahead Suggestion

7 Lessons

Discover the typeahead suggestion System Design, covering aspects like efficient data structures and assemblers for updating suggestions.
38.

Design a Collaborative Document Editing Service / Google Docs

5 Lessons

Understand the System Design of Google Docs, using different techniques to address storage, collaborative editing, and concurrency issues.
39.

Spectacular Failures

4 Lessons

Learn how to avoid failures and outages by discussing case studies of real-world, large-scale distributed systems like Facebook, AWS, etc.
40.

Concluding Remarks

1 Lesson

Reflect on key takeaways, highlight unique aspects of each Design Problem, and get pointers on the next steps to master System Design.

Trusted by 1.4 million developers working at companies

Anthony Walker

@_webarchitect_

Emma Bostian 🐞

@EmmaBostian

Evan Dunbar

ML Engineer

Carlos Matias La Borde

Software Developer

Souvik Kundu

Front-end Developer

Vinay Krishnaiah

Software Developer

Eric Downs

Musician/Entrepeneur

Kenan Eyvazov

DevOps Engineer

Anthony Walker

@_webarchitect_

Emma Bostian 🐞

@EmmaBostian

Hands-on Learning Powered by AI

See how Educative uses AI to make your learning more immersive than ever before.

Instant Code Feedback

Evaluate and debug your code with the click of a button. Get real-time feedback on test cases, including time and space complexity of your solutions.

AI-Powered Mock Interviews

Adaptive Learning

Explain with AI

AI Code Mentor