- Who it's for
- University students and working software engineers (0–8 yrs)
- Format
- Live workshops + design reviews
- Duration
- 8 weeks
Trainer holds a Systems Design certificate from eCornell (Cornell University).
Overview
A practical course on designing large-scale systems. You learn the building blocks — load balancing, caching, sharding, queues, replication, consensus — then apply them to real prompts with feedback on your tradeoffs, diagrams, and communication.
What you'll be able to do
- Reason about latency, throughput, availability, and consistency tradeoffs
- Estimate capacity and back-of-the-envelope numbers on the spot
- Design data models and choose appropriate storage (SQL, NoSQL, blob, search)
- Draw clear architecture diagrams and narrate your decisions
- Handle senior-level follow-ups on bottlenecks, failure modes, and scaling
Roles this prepares you for
- Backend / platform / infrastructure engineer
- Mid-to-senior software engineer interview loops
Syllabus
- 01
Fundamentals & estimation
Napkin math, the CAP theorem in practice, SLIs/SLOs, and how to scope an ambiguous prompt.
- 02
Storage & data modeling
Indexes, partitioning, replication, denormalization, and picking a database for the workload.
- 03
Caching & CDNs
Cache placement, invalidation strategies, hot keys, and edge delivery.
- 04
Asynchronous processing
Message queues, event streams, idempotency, exactly-once vs. at-least-once.
- 05
Case studies
URL shortener, news feed, rate limiter, chat, ride-sharing, and a metrics pipeline.
- 06
Mock design interviews
Two recorded 45-minute sessions with written scorecards.
Frequently asked
Is this only for interview prep?+
No. The same skills apply to real architecture decisions, but the course is structured so interview candidates can use it directly.
How much coding is involved?+
Very little. The focus is architecture, tradeoffs, and communication.
Ready to get started?
Book a free intro call or send us a message with your questions.