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🗺️ 12-Week MAANG System Design Roadmap (2026 Edition)

"If you have 1 hour a day, this is how you crack L5/L6 at Google/Meta/Amazon."

This roadmap is designed by a Senior Staff Engineer to take you from "knowing the terms" to "designing exabyte-scale systems."

🟢 Part 1: Foundations (Weeks 1-3)

Focus: Mastering the 'Why'. Do not skip this. Most L5 rejections happen here.

Week 1: The Core Patterns

  • Topics: Vertical vs Horizontal scaling, Load Balancing (L4 vs L7), Consistent Hashing.
  • Goal: Explain why round-robin LB is a bad idea for stateful services.
  • Checklist: Read 02-fundamentals/02-scalability-basics.md.

Week 2: Storage Engines & Databases

  • Topics: B-Trees vs LSM-Trees, SQL vs NoSQL (The real tradeoff), Indexing strategies.
  • Goal: Choose between Postgres and Cassandra based on write-amplification.
  • Checklist: Read 03-building-blocks/02-databases-sql-nosql.md.

Week 3: Distributed Theory (The L5+ Barrier)

  • Topics: CAP Theorem (The PIE version), PACELC, Consensus (Raft/Paxos).
  • Goal: Explain how Spanner achieves "Strong Consistency" globally.
  • Checklist: Read 02-fundamentals/04-consistency-patterns.md.

🟡 Part 2: Building Blocks & API (Weeks 4-6)

Focus: Designing the interface and the data flow.

Week 4: Caching & Message Queues

  • Topics: Cache-aside vs Write-through, Redis architecture, Kafka partitioning.
  • Goal: Design a system that handles 1M QPS using only 10% of the DB capacity.
  • Checklist: Read 03-building-blocks/03-caches.md.

Week 5: API Design & Data Modeling

  • Topics: REST vs gRPC, Protobuf, Schema design for NoSQL.
  • Goal: Design an API that is backward-compatible for 3 years.
  • Checklist: Create 3 schemas for your favorite app.

Week 6: Networking & Security

  • Topics: HTTP/2 vs HTTP/3, DNS (Anycast/Latency-based), OAuth2 flows.
  • Goal: Explain how a CDN resolves "Cold Start" latency for global users.

🟠 Part 3: Architecture Case Studies (Weeks 7-9)

Focus: Putting it all together. 2 Case studies per week.

Week 7: Scaling Communication

  • Projects: Design a URL Shortener, Design a Notification System.
  • Focus: Efficiency and durability.

Week 8: Scaling Social & Media

  • Projects: Design Twitter/X, Design YouTube.
  • Focus: Fan-out, Storage optimization, and Ingestion pipelines.

Week 9: Scaling "Hard" Systems

  • Projects: Design Uber (Real-time GIS), Design a Payment System (Distributed Transactions).
  • Focus: High availability and Data integrity.

🔴 Part 4: Staff-Level & Mocking (Weeks 10-12)

Focus: Failure, Post-mortems, and Delivery.

Week 10: Advanced Failure Modes

  • Topics: Multi-region Active-Active, Chaos Engineering, Load Shedding.
  • Goal: Design a system that can lose an entire AWS Region and heal in < 60s.

Week 11: Real-World Failures & Post-mortems

  • Topics: Cache Stampede, Thundering Herd, Cascading Failures.
  • Goal: Walk through a Meta outage and explain the "Fix" on a whiteboard.

Week 12: Mock Interview Marathon

  • Goal: Do 3 mocks on Pramp or with a colleague.
  • Checklist: Use the PRACTICE-CHECKLIST.md to grade yourself.

🏆 The "Final Boss" Challenge

Design a system that ranks 1B ads per second across 3 continents with <50ms P99 latency. If you can answer this without sweating, you are ready for Staff (L6).

📅 6-Week Intensive Sprint (Alternative)

For those who need faster preparation (interview in 6 weeks)

Week 1-2: Fundamentals Deep Dive

Day Topic Practice
1-2 CAP Theorem, PACELC Explain with real examples
3-4 Database: SQL vs NoSQL Choose DB for 3 scenarios
5-6 Caching strategies Design cache for Twitter
7 Message Queues Design notification system

Week 3-4: Building Blocks Mastery

Day Topic Practice
8-9 API Design Design CRUD API for e-commerce
10-11 Data Modeling Design schema for Uber
12-13 Load Balancing, CDNs Design CDN architecture
14 Mock Interview 1 Record and review

Week 5-6: Case Studies & Advanced

Day Topic Practice
15-17 Twitter/X Design Full design with 2 mocks
18-20 Payment System Focus on consistency
21-23 Multi-region, Chaos Design DR strategy
24 Mock Interview 2 Feedback from peer
25-27 Real-world failures Study 5+ postmortems
28 Mock Interview 3 Timed practice

🎯 Level-Specific Preparation

L4 (SDE II) - 6 weeks

  • Focus on completing happy path
  • Master 4 easy case studies
  • Practice speaking while drawing

L5 (Senior) - 12 weeks

  • Master all 16 case studies
  • Quantify every decision
  • Handle 3+ follow-ups

L6 (Staff) - Add 4 weeks

  • Multi-region design
  • Cost modeling
  • Organizational thinking