Master these building blocks before tackling interview problems. Each guide covers the theory, practical patterns, and interview-ready knowledge you need.
Learn to quickly estimate system capacity, storage needs, and throughput requirements. The first skill interviewers look for.
TCP vs UDP, HTTP/2, WebSockets, gRPC — understand when to use each protocol and the tradeoffs involved.
B-trees, LSM trees, indexing strategies, replication, and sharding. Know how databases work under the hood.
Cache-aside, write-through, write-behind, eviction policies, and cache invalidation patterns for distributed systems.
CAP theorem, consistency models, consensus algorithms (Paxos, Raft), and failure modes in distributed systems.
Bloom filters, consistent hashing, skip lists, merkle trees, and other structures that power large-scale systems.
Feature stores, model serving, training pipelines, A/B testing for ML, and real-time inference at scale.