Knowledge graph
Skill tree
How the curriculum stacks up: networking fundamentals at the base, distributed consensus in the middle, real-world architectures at the top.
Phase 0
Networking, OS & Database Foundations
What you must know before designing any distributed system.
Phase 1
Core Architecture Patterns
REST, caching, load balancing, and CDNs.
Phase 2
Distributed Data
Replication, sharding, CAP, message queues.
Phase 3
Resilience & Observability
Consensus, circuit breakers, SLOs.
Phase 4
Microservices
Gateways, service discovery, service mesh.
Phase 5
Cloud Infrastructure
AWS, containers, Kubernetes, autoscaling.
Phase 6
Performance & Capacity
Latency, throughput, capacity math.
Phase 7
Enterprise Patterns
CQRS, event sourcing, saga, outbox.
Phase 8
AI & Real-Time Systems
Vector DBs, RAG, CRDTs.
Phase 9
Storage Internals
LSM trees, Bloom filters, gossip.
Phase 10
End-to-End Designs
YouTube, Netflix, Uber, Stripe, Slack, Twitter.