Software Engineer Roadmap
System design
Reasoning about trade-offs at scale.
4 weeks · wk 25–28Core / deep pace6 topics18 Interview Questions
Why this pace:Largely new territory — this is the other big time investment alongside DSA. Practice with real whiteboard-style problems weekly.
SEC FOCUS
Rate limiting and defense-in-depth are system design decisions, not an afterthought bolted on later.
Topics & Action Items (6)
01
Vertical vs horizontal scaling
1-2 hrs02
Caching strategies (CDN, in-memory, DB)
2-3 hrs03
Load balancing and rate limiting
1-2 hrs04
Consistency vs availability trade-offs
2 hrs05
Designing for graceful failure
1-2 hrs06
Whiteboard-style practice
2-3 hrs/wk