LiveSystem Design Interview Bootcamp
Design 14 real systems live, then face two mock interviews with written feedback
Seven weekends of live whiteboarding. You learn one framework, the building blocks under every design, and how to talk through trade-offs the way interviewers score them. Then you practise it in two one-to-one mock interviews.
Schedule
Weekends only. Pick the slot that fits your day.
7 weekends from Saturday, 31 October 2026 to Sunday, 13 December 2026. Each class is two hours, live on Google Meet, and recorded.
Morning slot
Small batchSaturdays and Sundays, 10:00 AM to 12:00 PM IST
Times in other countries
- From Sat 31 Oct: Sat + Sun, 12:30 AM to 2:30 AM; From Sat 7 Nov: Fri + Sat, 11:30 PM to 1:30 AM US Eastern
- Sat + Sun, 4:30 AM to 6:30 AM London
- Sat + Sun, 5:30 AM to 7:30 AM Central Europe
- Sat + Sun, 8:30 AM to 10:30 AM Dubai
- Sat + Sun, 12:30 PM to 2:30 PM Singapore
Evening slot
Small batchSaturdays and Sundays, 8:30 PM to 10:30 PM IST
Times in other countries
- From Sat 31 Oct: Sat 11:00 AM to 1:00 PM, Sun from 10:00 AM; From Sat 7 Nov: Sat + Sun, 10:00 AM to 12:00 PM US Eastern
- Sat + Sun, 3:00 PM to 5:00 PM London
- Sat + Sun, 4:00 PM to 6:00 PM Central Europe
- Sat + Sun, 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM Dubai
- Sat + Sun, 11:00 PM to 1:00 AM Singapore
Neither time works? Tell me what would.
Outcomes
What you will be able to do
- 1Run a 45-minute design interview with one framework: requirements, estimates, high-level design, deep dive and wrap-up.
- 2Estimate traffic, storage and bandwidth out loud in two minutes, with numbers you can defend.
- 3Pick between SQL and NoSQL, caching patterns, queues and logs, and sharding schemes, and say why.
- 4Design 14 well-known systems and explain the one decision that matters most in each.
- 5Draw clean diagrams on a shared whiteboard while you talk.
- 6Take two mock interviews and get written feedback on where you lose points.
Curriculum
Week by week
Every weekend has the same rhythm: Saturday is the concept and a guided lab, Sunday is a build on your own machine and a review together. Every class ends with a hands-on lab.
Saturday
How interviewers score you
- The five steps: requirements, estimates, high-level design, deep dive, wrap-up
- Functional vs non-functional requirements
- Back-of-the-envelope maths: QPS, storage, bandwidth, and latency numbers worth knowing
Lab: Estimation drills on five systems, timed.
Sunday
Designs 1 and 2: URL shortener and rate limiter
- Short IDs: counters, hashing and base62, and the collision problem
- 301 vs 302 redirects and caching
- Token bucket vs sliding window, and a shared limit with Redis
Lab: Whiteboard both designs in pairs, then review against the model answer.
Saturday
Load balancers, caches, CDNs and databases
- Layer 4 vs layer 7 load balancing
- Cache-aside, write-through, eviction and the cache stampede
- Replication, indexes, sharding and consistent hashing
Lab: Choose a database for six short scenarios and defend each choice.
Sunday
Designs 3 and 4: typeahead and news feed
- Tries and precomputed top results
- Fan-out on write vs fan-out on read, and the celebrity problem
- Ranking and pagination
Lab: Whiteboard both designs, then compare trade-offs as a class.
Saturday
Queues, logs and Kafka
- Queue vs log, partitions, consumer groups and offsets
- Replication and in-sync replicas
- At-least-once delivery, idempotency and the outbox pattern
Lab: Trace a message through Kafka during a broker failure.
Sunday
Designs 5 and 6: a Kafka-like queue and a notification system
- Storage layout of a commit log
- Retries, dead letter queues and rate limits per channel
- Push, email and SMS providers
Lab: Whiteboard both designs in pairs.
Saturday
Connections, presence and location
- WebSockets, long polling and server-sent events
- Message ordering, delivery and read receipts
- Geospatial indexes: geohash, quadtree and H3
Lab: Size the connection servers for 50 million online users.
Sunday
Designs 7 and 8: WhatsApp and Uber
- One-to-one and group chat, offline delivery
- Matching riders and drivers, and location updates every few seconds
- Mock interview 1 is booked this week
Lab: Whiteboard both designs; first round of 1:1 mock interviews starts.
Saturday
Blobs, video and sync
- Object storage and chunked uploads
- Transcoding pipelines and adaptive bitrate (HLS and DASH)
- Delta sync and conflict handling
Lab: Work out the storage and CDN cost of a video platform.
Sunday
Designs 9 and 10: Netflix and Google Drive
- Upload, transcode, store and stream
- File chunks, metadata and sync across devices
- Review of mock interview 1 patterns
Lab: Whiteboard both designs in pairs.
Saturday
Payments without losing a rupee
- Idempotency keys and retries that never charge twice
- Double-entry ledgers and reconciliation
- Sagas, and webhooks from payment providers
Lab: Find the double-charge bug in a payment flow.
Sunday
Designs 11 and 12: a payment system and IRCTC Tatkal booking
- A payment service in the style of Stripe or Razorpay
- Seat inventory under a huge spike: queues, locks and holds that expire
- Fairness and bot protection
Lab: Whiteboard both designs; second round of 1:1 mock interviews starts.
Saturday
Designs 13 and 14: web crawler and Google Docs
- Crawl frontier, politeness and deduplication
- Real-time collaborative editing: operational transforms vs CRDTs
- How to recover when you get stuck in an interview
Lab: Whiteboard both designs under interview time limits.
Sunday
What costs people offers
- The most common mistakes from all mock interviews, shown anonymously
- How to answer follow-up questions and change your design calmly
- Your plan for the weeks after the bootcamp
Lab: A last timed design round with live feedback.
Read ahead on the site: URL shortener · Rate limiter · Typeahead · News feed · Kafka · Notifications · WhatsApp · Uber · Netflix · Google Drive · Payments · IRCTC Tatkal · Web crawler · Google Docs
Labs and projects
What you build
All labs are our own and run on your laptop. The code is in a labs repo you get before the first class.
14 whiteboard designs
Each design drawn by you, reviewed against a model answer, kept as a PDF you can revise from.
Excalidraw · Shared whiteboard
Two 1:1 mock interviews
45 minutes each, booked outside class hours, with written feedback on requirements, estimates, design, deep dive and communication.
Google Meet · Shared whiteboard
Estimation sheet
Your own one-page sheet of the numbers you will use in every interview.
Who it is for
Is this for you?
This is for
- Engineers with 2 or more years of experience preparing for SDE-2, senior or staff interviews.
- Engineers who know the building blocks but freeze when asked to design something end to end.
- Engineers changing companies in the next three to six months.
You need
- You have built or worked on a backend service, in any language.
- You know what an API, a database and a cache are. The bootcamp goes deep on all three.
- A laptop with a good internet connection and a microphone. A camera is welcome but optional.
Not for
- Students who have not written any backend code yet: start with the free lessons first.
- Someone who wants a guarantee of a job offer. Nobody can honestly promise that.
Careers
Roles you can target after this
SDE-2 / SDE-3 Backend Engineer
System design rounds decide the level you are offered.
Senior / Staff Backend Engineer
Expected to lead designs and defend trade-offs with numbers.
Platform or Infrastructure Engineer
Owns the queues, caches and databases every design uses.
Solutions Architect
Designs systems with customers on a whiteboard, much like the interview.
Companies that hire for these skills include:
Check each company's careers page for current openings. We have no hiring arrangement with any of them. This programme does not promise a job, a placement or a salary.
Your instructor
Roni Das
18 years of building and running enterprise systems. He writes and teaches the courses on systemdesign.academy: 770 system design lessons and 212 AI engineering lessons, with labs he runs himself.
What is included
Everything you get
14 live classes, 28 hours on Google Meet, with time for your questions in every class.
Every recording, with lifetime access on systemdesign.academy.
The labs repo: every lab and project, runnable on your laptop.
A certificate of completion from systemdesign.academy.
A doubt-clearing group for your batch, between classes.
Included once your fee is fully paid: lifetime access to the self-paced System Design Masterclass on systemdesign.academy (770 lessons and 106 interview walkthroughs).
How paying works
- Full fee: ₹15,000 / $300 in one payment.
- Or reserve your seat for ₹2,000 / $40 now, and pay the remaining ₹13,000 / $260 before the batch starts. The deposit is credited in full.
- Every payment follows our refund and cancellation policy.
Questions
Frequently asked questions
When are the two mock interviews?
The first is booked in weekend 4 and the second in weekend 6, at a 45-minute time you choose outside class hours. Written feedback arrives within three days of each.
Will this guarantee me a job?
No. Nobody can honestly promise that. The bootcamp gives you a method, practice and honest feedback. The interview is still yours to pass.
Which designs are covered?
URL shortener, rate limiter, typeahead, news feed, a Kafka-like queue, notifications, WhatsApp, Uber, Netflix, Google Drive, a payment system, IRCTC Tatkal booking, a web crawler and Google Docs.
When does the batch start, and when are the classes?
The batch starts on Saturday, 31 October 2026. Classes are on Saturdays and Sundays for 7 weekends, two hours each, in the morning slot (10:00 AM to 12:00 PM IST) or the evening slot (8:30 PM to 10:30 PM IST). You choose one slot when you enrol. The last class is on Sunday, 13 December 2026.
What if I miss a class?
Every class is recorded. The recording appears in My live classes on systemdesign.academy after the class, and you keep it for life. Bring your questions to the next class or to the batch group.
How does the seat reservation work?
Pay the reservation deposit to hold your seat in the slot you choose. The deposit is credited in full against the fee, so you pay only the rest. Pay the remaining amount before the batch starts; your reservation email has a link to do it.
Can I get a refund?
Every payment follows our refund and cancellation policy. Please read it before you pay: systemdesign.academy/refund-policy.
How many people are in a batch?
It is a small batch: at most 30 people in each slot, so there is time for your questions.
How do I pay?
In India: UPI, cards or netbanking through Razorpay, in rupees. Everywhere else: PayPal, or a Visa or Mastercard card, in US dollars.
Is a self-paced course included?
Included once your fee is fully paid: lifetime access to the self-paced System Design Masterclass on systemdesign.academy (770 lessons and 106 interview walkthroughs).
Do I get a certificate?
Yes. You get a certificate of completion from systemdesign.academy at the end of the programme.
Where do the classes happen?
On Google Meet. Your joining link and the class calendar reach your email before the first class.
Still unsure? Ask on our WhatsApp group, or book a short call on topmate.io/roni.
Need a different time?
Tell me which days and times work for you
If enough people ask for a similar time, I will open a new slot and email you. This does not hold a seat; a seat is held only by enrolling or reserving.