Senior engineer
System design, databases, low level design and AI systems, and the judgement that ties them together.
What does a senior engineer do?
A senior engineer is trusted with decisions that are expensive to undo: how the data is split, what happens when a region goes down, how the code is shaped so the next feature is cheap, and where a model belongs in the product.
This roadmap is broader than the system design one. It adds the database internals, the class level design and the AI systems a senior engineer is expected to reason about.
- Stage 01Think in numbers
Every design argument ends in arithmetic.
6 of 6 written - Stage 02Data that holds up
What the database promises, and what it does not.
6 of 6 written - Stage 03Building blocks
The parts every large system is assembled from.
6 of 6 written - Stage 04Code that lasts
Design at the level of classes and modules.
4 of 4 written - Stage 05The classic questions
The ones every interviewer has asked.
8 of 8 writtenCheckpointDesign a web crawler - Stage 06Staff level
Problems where the hard part is the trade-off, not the boxes.
8 of 8 written - Stage 07Systems with a model inside
Judgement about where a model belongs, and how to keep it honest.
6 of 6 written - Stage 08India scale
Systems with a billion users and one busy morning.
3 of 3 written