16 Best Resources to Crack the System Design Interview
Proven Resources to Prepare for System Design Interview
image_credit — Exponent
Hello guys, today I wanted to share with you the list of the top 11 resources to prepare for the system design interview.
Not everybody is lucky enough to work on a distributed system. Besides each system solves a different problem. So the best way to master system design is by studying real-world architectures.
Yet it’s not needed to have knowledge of every technology to pass the system design interview. But it’s important to provide a solution that makes sense.
Also depth and breadth of the interview depend on the seniority level that you apply for.
In the past, I have shared System Design Interview Prep Guide as well as best System design interview books, courses, cheat sheets, and websites and in this article, I am sharing resources for system design interviews
By the way, if you are preparing for System design interviews and want to learn System Design in depth then you can also checkout sites like ByteByteGo, Design Guru, Exponent, Educative and Udemy which have many great System design courses
15 Best Resources for System Design Interview Preparation
Here is the list of the top 11 resources to prepare for the system design interview:
1. ByteByteGo
A live book and course by Alex Xu for System design interview preparation. It contains all the content of System Design Interview book volume 1 and 2 and will be updated with volume 3 which is coming soon.
Here is a complete System Design Interview blue print from ByteByteGo which you can use for preparation:
image_credit — ByteByteGo
2. Design Gurus
They offer the famous Grokking the System Design Interview course.
It gives you a reliable framework to approach the interview. And the course is an easy read.
3. Educative’s Interactive System Design Course
An interactive learning platform with hands-on exercises and real-world scenarios to strengthen your system design skills
4. Exponent
A specialized site for interview prep especially for FAANG companies like Amazon and Google, They also have a great system design course and many other material which can help you crack FAANG interviews.
Here is a nice system design interview cheat sheet from Exponent
5. Designing Data-Intensive Applications
This is the sacred book for system design. So consider reading it even if you’re a junior engineer. Because it will fill your theoretical knowledge gaps.
But this book will not prepare you for a 45-minute time-boxed system design interview.
And if you don’t understand any specific topic in the book, you can use the references to do extra study.
Also don’t forget that the system design interview is a discussion. So the interview might test your knowledge of the fundamentals.
By the way, if you are preparing for System design interviews and want to learn System Design in depth then you can also checkout sites like ByteByteGo, Design Guru, Exponent, Educative and Udemy which have many great System design courses
6. Web Scalability for Startup Engineers
This is a simple book to learn about scalable architectures. And distributed systems.
If you’re getting started with system design, consider reading it.
7. System Design Interview Vol 2
This book gives you a framework to approach system design interviews. You can also checkout ByteByteGo by Alex Xu, which contains content from both volumes 1 and 2 for the System design interview plus a lot more content.
It’s a well-known book for system design interview preparation.
8. The Site Reliability Workbook
Google offers the online version of this book for free.
If you want to study capacity planning for system design, consider reading it. The chapter Introducing Non-Abstract Large System Design covers it well.
9. System Design Primer (free)
If you’re a beginner to system design. And wants to study the system design concepts. This is probably the best free resource.
Source: GitHub
10. InfoQ
This platform offers excellent articles and videos on software architecture.
It helps you to deepen your knowledge.
11. Scale YouTube Channel
It contains a ton of content on real-world systems and scalability concepts.
An extra resource to deepen your system design skills.
12. MIT Distributed Systems YouTube Channel
It covers the fundamentals of distributed systems.
And covers lots of theory well.
13. USENIX YouTube Channel
It offers videos on best engineering practices. And software architecture.
14. Amazon Dynamo Whitepaper
If you don’t have time to read many white papers. Then consider reading this one.
15. High Scalability Blog
A blog that features articles and case studies on the architecture of high-traffic websites and scalable systems.
16. System Design One Newsletter by @Neo Kim
This is another System Design newsletter I have subscribed personally to keep myself up-to-ate with how different companies are doing System Design. Created by Neo Kim,
Here are a couple of popular System Design articles and case studies from this newsletter:
- How Razorpay Scaled to Handle Flash Sales at 1500 Requests per Second (read)
- How Stripe Prevents Double Payment Using Idempotent API
- How McDonald’s Food Delivery Platform Handles 20,000 Orders per Second
- How Uber Finds Nearby Drivers at 1 Million Requests per Second
- How Cloudflare Was Able to Support 55 Million Requests per Second With Only 15 Postgres Clusters
- How Amazon S3 Achieves 99.999999999% Durability
- How Tinder Scaled to 1.6 Billion Swipes per Day
- How to Scale an App to 10 Million Users on AWS
Here is the link to join this newsletter — System Design One by @Neo Kim
That’s all about the best resources for System design interviews. It will help you to learn key System design concepts on replication, scalability, caching, performance as well also keep yourself with trendy technological changes.
Other System Design Tutorials and Resources you may like
- Top 5 Places to learn System design and Software design
- Is DesignGuru’s System Design Course worth it
- The Complete Java Developer RoadMap
- Is Exponent’s System Design Course worth it?
- 10 Best Places to Learn System Design in 2024
- How to Prepare for System Design Interview in 2024
- Is ByteByteGo really worth the hype?
- My Favorite Software Design Courses for 2024
- 3 Places to Practice System Design Mock interviews
- 20 System Design Interview Questions for Practice
- Is Designing Data intensive application book worth reading?
All the best for your System Design Interviews, if you have any doubt or questions, feel free to ask in comments.
P. S. — If you just want to do one thing at this moment, go join ByteByteGo and start learning System Design concepts, you will thank me later. Make it a goal for new year and you will surely be a better Software Engineer.
