System Design: Monoliths to Microservices
System design separates senior engineers from junior ones. This advanced course teaches you to architect distributed systems that scale to millions of users. Learn to break monoliths into microservices, design for high availability and fault tolerance, implement load balancing and service discovery, and choose between consistency and availability (CAP theorem). Master decomposition patterns, domain-driven design, API gateway patterns, and inter-service communication. Understand data consistency in distributed systems: eventual consistency, saga patterns, and distributed transactions. Design for failure: circuit breakers, bulkheads, timeouts, and retries. Study scalability patterns: horizontal vs. vertical scaling, caching strategies, database sharding, and CDN usage. Learn to estimate capacity, design for observability, and implement distributed tracing. Analyze real-world systems: how Netflix, Uber, Twitter, and Amazon architect their platforms. Practice system design interviews with common questions: design Instagram, design Uber, design a URL shortener. By graduation, you will confidently design systems that handle millions of users, fail gracefully, and scale cost-effectively.
Led by
Mbiarrambang Alain
Join the Cohort
Limited spots available for the next intake.
Next Cohort Starts
Wed, April 1, 2026
Women's Day Offer
Pay the application fee by March 31, 2026 to allow us to review your application and lock in this 20% tuition discount.
Fee required to secure your interview slot.
Weekly Live Sessions
Interactive zoom classes with Mbiarrambang Alain
Real-time Task Reviews
Get feedback on your weekly assignments
Community Access
Join the private discord for 24/7 support
What You'll Learn
Real-World Projects You'll Build
Social Media Platform
Design a scalable social network with feeds, posts, and real-time features
Technologies:
Outcomes:
- →Complete architecture
- →Scalability plan
- →Failure handling
- →Performance estimates
E-commerce Platform
Design a high-availability e-commerce system handling millions of transactions
Technologies:
Outcomes:
- →System architecture
- →Data consistency strategy
- →Scaling plan
- →Capacity estimates
Your Weekly Journey
10 weeks • Live FormatWeek 1System Design Fundamentals
Core concepts and design principles
Topics Covered:
- •Scalability fundamentals
- •Performance vs. scalability
- •Latency vs. throughput
- •Availability patterns
- •Design principles
Week 2CAP Theorem & Consistency
Understanding distributed system tradeoffs
Topics Covered:
- •CAP theorem explained
- •Consistency models
- •Eventual consistency
- •Strong consistency
- •Choosing the right model
Week 3Microservices Architecture
Breaking monoliths into services
Topics Covered:
- •Monolith vs. microservices
- •Domain-driven design
- •Service boundaries
- •API design for microservices
- •Data management
Week 4Load Balancing & Service Discovery
Distribute traffic and find services
Topics Covered:
- •Load balancing algorithms
- •Service discovery patterns
- •API gateway
- •Reverse proxy
- •Health checks
Week 5Data Management in Distributed Systems
Handle data across services
Topics Covered:
- •Database per service
- •Shared database anti-pattern
- •Event sourcing
- •CQRS pattern
- •Data synchronization
Week 6Reliability & Fault Tolerance
Design systems that handle failures gracefully
Topics Covered:
- •Circuit breaker pattern
- •Retry and timeout strategies
- •Bulkhead pattern
- •Graceful degradation
- •Chaos engineering
Week 7Caching & Performance
Optimize system performance
Topics Covered:
- •Caching strategies
- •CDN usage
- •Database optimization
- •Query caching
- •Application-level caching
Week 8Observability & Monitoring
Monitor and debug distributed systems
Topics Covered:
- •Logging best practices
- •Metrics and monitoring
- •Distributed tracing
- •Alerting strategies
- •Debugging distributed systems
Week 9Real-World System Designs
Study and design real systems
Topics Covered:
- •Design Instagram/Twitter
- •Design Uber/Lyft
- •Design Netflix
- •Design URL shortener
- •Design chat system
Week 10Interview Preparation & Practice
Master system design interviews
Topics Covered:
- •Interview framework
- •Communication strategies
- •Common pitfalls
- •Mock interviews
- •Feedback and improvement
Capstone Projects
Apply everything you've learned in real-world projects
Skills You'll Master
Job-Ready Guarantee
Our curriculum is designed to get you hired. 92% of our graduates land a job within 6 months.
Your Mentor
Mbiarrambang Alain
Software Architect
Architected systems serving 50M+ users, ex-senior engineer at tech unicorn
Career Opportunities
- Software Architect
- Principal Engineer
- Systems Engineer
- Technical Lead
- Solutions Architect