System Design Interview Playbook

What is in the path

The path page lists five modules totalling 76 chapters and 666 lessons:

1. System Design Fundamentals (27 chapters, 171 lessons): the building blocks, from scalability and estimation to load balancing, caching, partitioning, replication, CAP, databases and distributed patterns.
2. Grokking the System Design Interview (4 chapters, 82 lessons): the interview approach, key trade-offs and 15 classic designs such as TinyURL, Instagram, Dropbox, Twitter, YouTube, Uber and Ticketmaster.
3. Advanced System Design Interview, Volume II (22 chapters, 224 lessons): harder case studies such as payments and flash sales, distributed systems patterns, and deep dives into Dynamo, Cassandra, Kafka, Chubby, HDFS, GFS and BigTable.
4. Grokking Microservices Design Patterns (19 chapters, 158 lessons): strangler fig, API gateway, circuit breaker, bulkhead, saga, outbox, CQRS, event sourcing and more.
5. Grokking Design Patterns for Engineers and Managers (4 chapters, 31 lessons): classic software design patterns and how they are classified.

A certificate is issued on completing the path, and a community space lets learners discuss questions.

Why the order matters

System design has real prerequisites. You cannot reason usefully about sharding before you understand replication, or about eventual consistency before the CAP trade-off. Learning out of order produces someone who can recite terms but cannot defend a choice, which is exactly what design rounds are built to detect. The path puts fundamentals first, then the interview approach, then advanced depth, then the architecture patterns you will meet in real systems.

How to use it

• Do not skip the fundamentals module because the vocabulary feels familiar. Its chapter assessments tell you quickly whether you actually know each building block.
• Move to the next module only when the chapter assessments feel easy.
• Practise throughout, not only at the end. After each design in the second module, attempt the next one yourself before reading it. The System Design Practice tool adds whiteboard practice with feedback.
• Keep a single notebook of trade-offs you meet across all five courses; it becomes your revision sheet.

How long it takes

With 666 lessons, this is a multi-month path rather than a quick sprint. At an hour a day, expect roughly three to five months to work through everything properly. If your interview is sooner, follow the order but focus on the first two modules, then the advanced one.

Buying and access

The path is available through an annual subscription that includes all current and upcoming courses, or as a lifetime purchase of this bundle alone. Regional pricing applies, so check the path page for the price in your country.

Common questions

Can I take the courses individually instead? Yes. Each course is also sold on its own; the path is a way to get them together in a recommended order.

Is it suitable for beginners? Yes. It starts from the fundamentals and builds up to senior-level material.

Does it include mock interviews? The path is self-paced course content. Separate practice tools and coaching are available on the same platform.

Best for: engineers who want one complete, sequenced system design curriculum from basics to advanced.