System Design Skill

Quick Reference

Scalability Progression

Level 1: Single Server
    │
    ▼ Bottleneck: CPU/Memory
Level 2: Load Balancer + Multiple Servers
    │
    ▼ Bottleneck: Database reads
Level 3: Caching Layer (Redis)
    │
    ▼ Bottleneck: Database writes
Level 4: Read Replicas
    │
    ▼ Bottleneck: Single DB limits
Level 5: Sharding / Partitioning
    │
    ▼ Bottleneck: Cross-shard queries
Level 6: CQRS + Event Sourcing

Architecture Decision Tree

What's your team size and product stage?
│
├─► Team < 10, product unclear
│   └─► Monolith (start simple)
│
├─► Team > 10, clear domain boundaries
│   └─► Microservices
│
├─► Variable workloads, pay-per-use
│   └─► Serverless
│
└─► High throughput, async workflows
    └─► Event-Driven

API Design

REST Best Practices

GET    /api/v1/users              # List
GET    /api/v1/users/{id}         # Get
POST   /api/v1/users              # Create
PUT    /api/v1/users/{id}         # Replace
PATCH  /api/v1/users/{id}         # Update
DELETE /api/v1/users/{id}         # Delete

GET    /api/v1/users/{id}/orders  # Nested

HTTP Status Codes

Database Selection

Security: OWASP Top 10 (2025)

Encryption Standards

Threat Modeling: STRIDE

┌─────────────────────────────────────────┐
│              STRIDE MODEL                │
├─────────────────────────────────────────┤
│  S - Spoofing                           │
│      → Strong auth, MFA                 │
│                                         │
│  T - Tampering                          │
│      → Integrity checks, signatures     │
│                                         │
│  R - Repudiation                        │
│      → Audit logging                    │
│                                         │
│  I - Information Disclosure             │
│      → Encryption, access control       │
│                                         │
│  D - Denial of Service                  │
│      → Rate limiting, DDoS protection   │
│                                         │
│  E - Elevation of Privilege             │
│      → Least privilege, RBAC            │
└─────────────────────────────────────────┘

Compliance Requirements

Disaster Recovery

Troubleshooting

System not scaling?
├─► Database bottleneck? → Add caching, replicas
├─► Single point of failure? → Add redundancy
├─► Stateful services? → Make stateless
└─► Network limits? → CDN, optimize payloads

Security incident response?
├─► 1. CONTAIN: Isolate affected systems
├─► 2. IDENTIFY: Scope and entry point
├─► 3. ERADICATE: Remove threat, patch
├─► 4. RECOVER: Restore from clean backup
└─► 5. LEARN: Post-mortem, improve

Common Failure Modes

Next Actions

Describe your system requirements for architecture recommendations.