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Premium Course Syllabus

HLD (High Level Design)

Condensed Placement Preparation Syllabus

System Design · Scalability · Databases · Caching · Interview Ready

7 Modules
35 Topics
7 Quizzes
Design

Ideal For

SDE-2 and above interviews at product-based companies — Amazon, Google, Microsoft
System Design rounds in placement drives at unicorns and startups
Backend engineers wanting to crack HLD interviews systematically
Students building a solid mental model for designing large-scale systems

Module-Wise Curriculum

A concise, placement-focused syllabus — covers every key concept without overloading.

1

Module 1

System Design Fundamentals

  • What is HLD — scope, goals, trade-offs, how interviews are evaluated
  • Scalability — vertical vs horizontal scaling, when to scale what
  • Latency vs Throughput vs Availability — definitions, measurement, trade-offs
  • CAP Theorem — Consistency, Availability, Partition Tolerance — which to sacrifice when
  • ACID vs BASE — transactional vs eventual consistency, choosing the right model
Quiz — System Design Foundations
2

Module 2

Databases At Scale

  • SQL vs NoSQL — when to choose relational, document, key-value, columnar, graph DBs
  • Database Sharding — horizontal partitioning, shard keys, consistent hashing
  • Database Replication — master-slave, master-master, read replicas, replication lag
  • Indexing at Scale — composite indexes, covering indexes, index cost vs benefit
  • Connection Pooling & Database Proxies — PgBouncer, ProxySQL, why they matter
Quiz — Databases at Scale
3

Module 3

Caching & Message Queues

  • Caching Strategies — Cache-Aside, Write-Through, Write-Back, Write-Around
  • Cache Eviction Policies — LRU, LFU, FIFO, TTL-based expiry
  • Redis vs Memcached — data structures, persistence, pub-sub, use cases
  • Message Queues — Kafka vs RabbitMQ vs SQS — producer-consumer pattern
  • Asynchronous Processing — decoupling services, retry logic, dead-letter queues
Quiz — Caching & Async Processing
4

Module 4

Load Balancing, Cdn & Networking

  • Load Balancing — Round Robin, Least Connections, IP Hashing, Layer 4 vs Layer 7
  • CDN (Content Delivery Network) — edge servers, cache invalidation, static asset delivery
  • API Gateway — rate limiting, authentication, request routing, SSL termination
  • DNS & GeoDNS — latency-based routing, failover, global traffic management
Quiz — Load Balancing & CDN
5

Module 5

Microservices & Apis

  • Monolith vs Microservices — trade-offs, when to migrate, service boundaries
  • Service Communication — synchronous (REST, gRPC) vs asynchronous (events, queues)
  • Service Discovery & Registry — Consul, Eureka, how services find each other
  • API Design Best Practices — REST conventions, pagination, versioning, idempotency
  • Circuit Breaker & Bulkhead — fault isolation patterns, Hystrix, Resilience4j
Quiz — Microservices & APIs
6

Module 6

Real-World System Case Studies

  • Design URL Shortener — hashing, collision handling, redirection, analytics
  • Design WhatsApp / Chat System — websockets, message storage, delivery receipts
  • Design Twitter / News Feed — fanout on write vs fanout on read, timeline generation
  • Design Netflix / YouTube — video encoding pipeline, CDN, adaptive bitrate streaming
  • Design Uber — geo-indexing, driver matching, surge pricing, ride tracking
  • Design Rate Limiter — token bucket, leaky bucket, sliding window counter
Quiz — Case Studies
7

Module 7

Interview Strategy & Estimation

  • Back-of-Envelope Estimation — storage, QPS, bandwidth — numbers to memorise
  • How to Structure an HLD Interview — clarify → estimate → high-level → deep dive
  • Common Trade-off Questions — consistency vs availability, latency vs cost
  • Top 15 HLD Interview Questions — structured walk-through for each
  • HLD Interview Mistakes to Avoid — over-engineering, skipping requirements, no numbers
Quiz — HLD Interview Readiness

Pattern-First

Learn recurring patterns, not one-off tricks — the fastest path to solving new problems.

Placement-Ready

Every module ends with an assessment or drill mapped to the way rounds are actually run.

AI-Assisted

Unlimited AI Tutor, Mock Interviews and Resume Review are included with your subscription.

Unlock HLD (High Level Design) and 13 more courses

One subscription. Every structured course, every AI tool, every private update — for a full year.

High-Level Design & System Design Notes for Interviews

A system design course built for interview conversations rather than architecture theory. It covers scalability basics, load balancing, caching layers and invalidation, database choice and sharding, replication and consistency trade-offs, message queues, rate limiting, CDNs and observability — each with the trade-off you are expected to state out loud.

The second half applies them to standard interview systems: URL shortener, news feed, chat application, file storage, ride-hailing, notification service. Every walkthrough follows the same frame — requirements, scale estimation, API design, data model, high-level diagram, bottlenecks, then failure handling.

What you'll learn in HLD (High Level Design)

  • System Design Fundamentals
  • Databases At Scale
  • Caching & Message Queues
  • Load Balancing, Cdn & Networking
  • Microservices & Apis
  • Real-World System Case Studies
  • Interview Strategy & Estimation

Why HLD (High Level Design) matters for placements

System design questions reach freshers as 'how would you build X' in the final round, and they decide role and band as much as the coding rounds. Interviewers score reasoning about trade-offs, so a repeatable framework beats memorised diagrams.

Free vs Premium — what's included

Free

  • This full module-wise syllabus and topic list
  • The free revision course for this subject
  • Free core CS question bank and roadmaps
  • Aptitude and DSA practice sheets

Premium

  • Full lesson content for every module listed above
  • Module quizzes and interview question sets
  • Worked examples, numericals and revision drills
  • All 14 premium placement courses, lifetime access

Frequently asked questions

Do freshers get asked system design questions?

Often, in a lighter form — one system, fewer scale requirements, more focus on the data model and API. Startups and product companies ask it more than mass recruiters.

How do I answer a system design question with no work experience?

Use a fixed structure: clarify functional and non-functional requirements, estimate scale, sketch APIs and the data model, draw components, then discuss bottlenecks and trade-offs. Structure is what is being marked.

Should I learn HLD before LLD?

LLD first. It builds the object-oriented vocabulary and is asked earlier in most hiring processes.