Design Software Systems Like a Senior Engineer – Complete Course

Learn software system design and pass interviews. This course provides a practical five-step framework for structuring your thinking and tackling vague requirements under pressure. Additionally, the course walks through real-world examples, designing systems similar to Spotify, Booking.com, WhatsApp from scratch. Course from @hayk.simonyan Become a senior software engineer with a job guarantee: https://hayksimonyan.com/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=video&utm_campaign=177-system-design-interview-guide&utm_content=august-2026 Timestamps: - 0:00:00 Why System Design Matters Section 1: System Design Framework - 0:02:16 Interview Formats Overview - 0:09:14 The 5 Step Framework 18:24 Tradeoffs and Extensions Section 2: System #1 - 0:23:55 Requirements and Capacity Planning - 0:29:24 Architecture and Data Flows - 0:35:23 API Design - 0:40:04 Storage and Schema Design - 0:44:37 Scaling to Millions Section 3: System #2 - 0:50:52 Non-Functional Targets - 0:58:22 Capacity Math and Architecture - 1:11:02 API Design and Idempotency - 1:22:34 Data Modeling and Inventory Logic - 1:33:05 Concurrency and Race Conditions - 1:34:44 Sharding, Caching and Scaling - 1:40:41 Search at Scale (Elasticsearch) - 1:45:19 Replication and Global Routing Section 4: System #3 - 1:50:45 Scale Estimation - 1:56:38 Architecture and Real Time Communication - 2:07:04 Data Modeling and API Flows - 2:13:10 Multi Device Sync and Offline Delivery - 2:22:37 Fanout, Media Storage and CDN Delivery - 2:31:44 Event Driven Architecture and Batch Processing - 2:39:18 Encryption and Rate Limiting - 2:49:45 Sharding and Cleanup Jobs - 2:57:53 Failure Handling and Global Scaling - 3:09:08 Feature Flags and Rollouts - 3:11:14 How to Actually Get Better ❤️ Support for this channel comes from our friends at Scrimba – the coding platform that's reinvented interactive learning: https://scrimba.com/freecodecamp 🎉 Thanks to our Champion and Sponsor supporters: 👾 @omerhattapoglu1158 👾 @goddardtan 👾 @akihayashi6629 👾 @kikilogsin 👾 @anthonycampbell2148 👾 @tobymiller7790 👾 @rajibdassharma497 👾 @CloudVirtualizationEnthusiast 👾 @adilsoncarlosvianacarlos 👾 @martinmacchia1564 👾 @ulisesmoralez4160 👾 @_Oscar_ 👾 @jedi-or-sith2728 👾 @justinhual1290 -- Learn to code for free and get a developer job: https://www.freecodecamp.org Read hundreds of articles on programming: https://freecodecamp.org/news