Systems & Architecture
Production systems knowledge for Staff+ engineers. How to design, build, deploy, and operate software at scale.
Prerequisites: Algorithms (especially Concurrency & Systems)
Topics
Section titled “Topics”| # | Topic | Primary Reference | Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | System Design | ByteByteGo + System Design Primer (free) | 4-5 weeks |
| 02 | Software Architecture | Software Architecture Patterns (O’Reilly) + AOSA (free) | 2-3 weeks |
| 03 | Cloud Native | Cloud Native DevOps with K8s + K8s docs (free) | 3-4 weeks |
| 04 | Observability | Observability Engineering + Google SRE Book (free) | 2-3 weeks |
| 05 | Incident Response & Chaos | Google SRE Book + SRE Workbook (free) | one drill per course pass |
Quick Start
Section titled “Quick Start”- Interview prep: Start with System Design — it’s asked at every Staff+ interview
- New to production: Cloud Native first, then Observability
- Architect role: Software Architecture, then System Design for breadth
- SRE/Platform: Observability + Cloud Native + System Design, then Incident Response & Chaos (drills against your own course system)
See Study Plan for the 11-15 week systems schedule.