Systems Design Primer

A fast track for senior engineers aiming to design modular, resilient backend services.

Intermediate6 steps~1.3 hours
Progress0/6
01HTTP FundamentalsFoundations

Understanding client-server protocol and headers.

12 min read

02gRPC & ProtobufAPI Design

Multiplexed microservice RPC channels and binary serialization.

11 min read

03Idempotency designAPI Design

How idempotency keys make distributed retries safe.

15 min read

04Caching TopologiesCaching Infrastructure

Cache-aside vs write-through and stampede prevention.

16 min read

05Message QueuesReliability & Scalability

Decoupling writes with event-driven messaging brokers.

12 min read

06Resilience GatesReliability & Scalability

Tripping calls to prevent thread exhaustion cascades.

14 min read