The System Design Interview, 2nd Edition is a comprehensive yet easy-to-read book that will teach you the must-know knowledge, concepts, and skills to ace your system design interview.

Written by industry professionals at Facebook and Google, this book contains well-tested, practical, and immediately usable techniques for answering interview questions on system design.

Unlike other books, this one teaches you exactly what you need to know and nothing else.

Featuring the PEDALS Method™

In researching this book, we found an effective six-step process to conquer those system design interviews which we call PEDALS:

  • Process Requirements

  • Estimate

  • Design the Service

  • Articulate the Data Model

  • List the Architectural Components

  • Scale

PEDALS demystifies the confusing system design interview by breaking it down into manageable steps. It’s almost like a recipe: each step adds to the next. You’ll make a clear progression starting from scratch and ending with a functional, scalable system.

In this book, we explain how you can use PEDALS as your blueprint for acing the system design interview.

We’ve also included detailed examples on how to use PEDALS on the most popular system design questions including:

  • Design YouTube

  • Design Twitter

  • Design Instagram

  • Design AutoSuggest

  • Design a TinyURL solution

What else you can expect from the book

  • A detailed walkthrough of the system design interview, including what to expect and what hiring managers seek in an ideal response

  • How to estimate server, storage, and bandwidth needs

  • How to design data models and navigate discussions around SQL vs. NoSQL databases

  • How to draw architecture diagrams on the whiteboard

  • How to build a basic cloud architecture

  • How to scale a cloud architecture to meet the needs of millions of users, including different workload scenarios

  • Understand the most popular system strategies for reducing latency, improving efficiency, and maintaining security

The course also includes a detailed review of technical concepts, including:

  • CAP Theorem

  • Hadoop

  • Hashing

  • MapReduce

  • Microservices

  • SQL vs. NoSQL

the BOOK YOU NEED

Whether you’re preparing for Google, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, or another top company this book will help you get your dream software engineering job.