2h 42m total
A taught high-level-design course that turns the intimidating open-ended interview into a repeatable engineering method. You'll learn a seven-step framework — clarify requirements, estimate, design the API, model the data, sketch the high-level architecture, deep-dive the hard parts, and hunt bottlenecks — and then apply it to the building blocks of every large system: back-of-the-envelope estimation, DNS and load balancing, SQL versus NoSQL and sharding, caching and CDNs, message queues and event streaming, the CAP/PACELC consistency spectrum and consensus, and the reliability patterns (rate limiting, idempotency, observability, graceful degradation) that keep it all up. It closes with full worked case studies — a URL shortener, a news feed, a chat system — and a capstone you design end to end on an embedded architecture canvas. Mixes prose, YAML/JSON API sketches, a Python capacity-calculation drill, MCQ tradeoff checks, ordering and matching activities, self-attestation checklists, and mentor-chat prompts so every skill is rehearsed in the format that fits it best.
