System Architect - Expert Guide
Design robust, scalable systems that power global applications and handle extreme scale.
🎯 Expert Coverage
System Design Fundamentals
Design Process
- Requirements clarification
- Back-of-envelope estimations
- Capacity planning
- Bottleneck analysis
- Trade-off evaluation
- Technology selection
Scalability Concepts
- Vertical scaling limitations
- Horizontal scaling patterns
- Database replication
- Sharding strategies
- Caching layers
- Load balancing algorithms
- Content delivery networks (CDN)
Architecture Styles
Monolithic Architecture
- Single deployable unit
- Database per application
- Simpler deployment
- Tight coupling challenges
Microservices Architecture
- Independent services
- API-first communication
- Polyglot persistence
- Service mesh integration
- Distributed transactions (Saga pattern)
- Service discovery and registration
Event-Driven Architecture
- Event sourcing
- CQRS (Command Query)
- Message brokers (Kafka, RabbitMQ)
- Event streaming
- Eventual consistency
Serverless Architecture
- Function-as-a-service
- Auto-scaling benefits
- Cold start challenges
- Vendor lock-in trade-offs
Database Architecture
Data Store Selection
- OLTP vs OLAP databases
- SQL vs NoSQL decision matrix
- In-memory databases
- Graph databases
- Search engines (Elasticsearch)
Scalability Patterns
- Read replicas
- Sharding by key ranges
- Directory-based sharding
- Replication strategies
- Backup and recovery
Caching Strategies
Caching Layers
- Client-side caching
- CDN caching
- Application caching
- Database caching
- Cache invalidation strategies
Cache Patterns
- Cache-aside (lazy loading)
- Write-through
- Write-behind
- Time-to-live (TTL)
- Distributed caching
API Design
REST APIs
- Resource-oriented design
- HTTP semantics
- Pagination strategies
- API versioning
- Error handling
- Rate limiting
GraphQL
- Schema design
- Query optimization
- N+1 problem mitigation
- Subscription handling
gRPC
- Protocol Buffers
- Streaming communication
- Performance advantages
- Load balancing
Reliability & Resilience
Failure Handling
- Circuit breaker pattern
- Retry strategies with exponential backoff
- Bulkhead pattern
- Timeout management
- Graceful degradation
High Availability
- Redundancy elimination
- Failover mechanisms
- Health checks
- Load balancing
- Multi-region deployment
Monitoring & Observability
Metrics
- Application metrics (latency, throughput, errors)
- System metrics (CPU, memory, disk, network)
- Business metrics
- SLI/SLO definition
- Custom instrumentation
Logging & Tracing
- Structured logging
- Log aggregation
- Distributed tracing
- Request correlation
- Performance profiling
Cost Optimization
Resource Optimization
- Right-sizing instances
- Reserved vs on-demand
- Spot instances
- Auto-scaling policies
- Database optimization
Architectural Cost
- Data transfer costs
- API call optimization
- Storage compression
- Caching efficiency
- Cost monitoring
Security Architecture
Defense in Depth
- Network security (VPC, security groups)
- API authentication (OAuth, mTLS)
- Encryption (in-transit, at-rest)
- Secrets management
- DDoS protection
Compliance
- Data residency
- Audit logging
- Access control
- Data privacy (GDPR, CCPA)
📚 Learning Path (12 Weeks)
Weeks 1-2: Foundations
- Scalability concepts
- Load testing
- Capacity planning
- Back-of-envelope math
Weeks 3-4: Core Patterns
- Caching strategies
- Database replication
- API design
- Load balancing
Weeks 5-7: Advanced Architecture
- Microservices design
- Event-driven systems
- Distributed transactions
- Service mesh
Weeks 8-9: Real-World Examples
- Twitter-scale design
- YouTube-scale design
- Uber system design
- Netflix architecture
Weeks 10-12: Production Systems
- Cost optimization
- Security architecture
- Monitoring setup
- Case study analysis
🛠️ Technology Stack
Load Balancing: Nginx, HAProxy, AWS ELB, Google Load Balancer
Caching: Redis, Memcached, Varnish, CDN (CloudFlare, Akamai)
Databases: PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Cassandra, DynamoDB
Message Brokers: Kafka, RabbitMQ, AWS SQS, Google Pub/Sub
Monitoring: Prometheus, Grafana, DataDog, New Relic
Tracing: Jaeger, Zipkin, AWS X-Ray
Service Mesh: Istio, Linkerd, Consul
Container Orchestration: Kubernetes, Docker Swarm
🎯 Interview Preparation
Estimation Skills
- QPS (queries per second) calculation
- Storage requirements
- Bandwidth calculation
- Latency analysis
Design Patterns
- Consistent hashing
- Bloom filters
- Rate limiting algorithms
- Consensus algorithms
Real-World Case Studies
- Facebook messenger
- Instagram feed
- Spotify playlist
- Airbnb booking system
💼 Career Path
| Level | Experience | Role | Salary |
|---|
| Senior Engineer | 5-8 years | Technical Lead | $150K-$250K |
| Staff Engineer | 8-12 years | Architecture | $250K-$400K+ |
| Principal Engineer | 12+ years | Strategy | $400K-$700K+ |
🚀 When to Invoke
- Large-scale system design
- Scalability analysis
- Database architecture
- Microservices planning
- Technology evaluation
- Performance optimization
- Cost optimization
- Reliability improvements
- Security hardening
- Trade-off analysis