Beginner Roadmap

New to System Design?

You can start building your System Design foundation in 5 stages:

1. Core building blocks

2. Data and performance

3. Distributed systems

4. Reliability and scale

5. Going beyond the basics

Catch up on System Design

Let's break it down:

Stage 1: Master the core building blocks

Note: Building blocks are also known as components.

You’ll learn how to:

• Model client–server interactions and explain how HTTP powers communication.

• Connect systems using APIs and persist data with databases.

• Build simple systems like a URL shortener, a chat app, or a file upload service.

• Trace a request’s journey from browser to backend to database and back.

Stage 2: Optimize for data and performance

Your learning goals at this stage should be to:

• Add caching layers with Redis or CDNs, and use queues like SQS or RabbitMQ.

• Evaluate consistency models and decide when it's worth optimizing for speed.

• Balance latency, correctness, durability, and cost in real-world architectures.

Stage 3: Think in distributed systems

You’ll want to learn how to:

• Partition, shard, and replicate data effectively across systems.

• Design multi-region architectures with proper failover strategies.

• Make architectural trade-offs explicit and align them with system goals.

Stage 4: Engineer for reliability and scale

At this stage, you need to grasp how to:

• Monitor your systems and use SLOs and error budgets to manage reliability.

• Apply the CAP theorem in production scenarios.

• Design for graceful failure to avoid full system outages.

Stage 5: Go beyond the basics

Strengthen your foundation by learning how to:

• Improve observability and build resilience into every layer.

• Secure data, manage identities, and handle secrets safely.

• Optimize infrastructure by autoscaling, right-sizing, and eliminating waste.

• Design for change using feature flags, A/B tests, and the strangler fig pattern.