System Design by Example
Published by O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Learn to design resilient systems for innovative technologies
Course outcomes:
- Understand how to approach problems and requirements using system design methodology
- Learn how to solve challenging real-time scenarios
Course description:
Join expert Rohit Bhardwaj to examine a step-by-step approach to system design using real-world examples from Uber, Netflix, Amazon, eBay, Instagram, Yelp, Twitter, and more. You’ll also explore search engine and fraud detection system design.
Week 1: System Design Fundamentals
Week 2: System Design Deep Dive
NOTE: With today’s registration, you’ll be signed up for both sessions. Although you can attend either of the sessions individually, we recommend participating in both.
What you’ll learn and how you can apply it
- Apply system design methodology to your current projects
- Apply system design principles to real-time scenarios
This live event is for you because...
- You’re a technical lead or a software, integration, or solutions architect.
- You’re planning to interview for a system design job.
Prerequisites
- A general understanding of system design principles
Recommended follow-up:
- Read Designing Distributed Systems (book)
Schedule
The time frames are only estimates and may vary according to how the class is progressing.
Week 1: Mastering System Design Fundamentals
System design methodology (50 minutes)
- Presentation: Empathy map; scaling KPIs; performance KPIs; back-of-envelope calculations; context diagrams; choosing the right database
- Hands-on exercises: Explore calculation and design
- Break
Problems and solutions for designing applications—Part I (60 minutes)
- Presentation: Designing a taxi-hailing app; designing a streaming service; Spark and Cassandra for real-time analytics
- Hands-on exercises: Explore taxi-hailing app, streaming service, and data model design
- Break
Problems and solutions for designing applications—Part II (60 minutes)
- Presentation: Designing a news feed, URL shortener, and auction
- Hands-on exercises: Explore news feed, URL shortener, and auction site design
Wrap-up and Q&A (10 minutes)
Week 2: System Design Deep Dive
Problems and solutions for designing applications—Part III (60 minutes)
- Presentation: Designing online shopping, booking services, and coupon systems
- Hands-on exercises: Explore ecommerce site and booking services design
- Break
Problems and solutions for designing applications—Part IV (60 minutes)
- Presentation: Designing chat apps, taxi-hailing apps (revisited), and product recommendations services
- Hands-on exercises: Explore product information system design
- Break
Problems and solutions for designing applications—Part V (60 minutes)
- Presentation: Designing mobile couponing, fraud detection, social media sentiment analysis, and product search services; system design challenges
- Hands-on exercises: Explore text analysis and search
- Q&A
Your Instructor
Rohit Bhardwaj
Rohit Bhardwaj is the CTO and director of AI architecture at Salesforce, where he leads strategy and design for enterprise-scale AI systems, multi-agent platforms, and data cloud integrations. He has extensive experience architecting multitenant, cloud native solutions using resilient microservices, service-oriented architectures, and the AWS stack.
As an Agentforce expert, Rohit specializes in generative AI, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), and AI-powered business transformation, with a strong focus on trust, governance, and resilience in AI system design. He conceptualizes and delivers high-value cloud solutions that reduce costs, increase efficiencies, and scale across global enterprises.
A regular speaker at No Fluff Just Stuff, UberConf, Richweb, GIDS, and international conferences, Rohit is widely recognized for his real-time analytics, system design mastery, and transformative AI insights. He’s also an accomplished author and educator.
Rohit holds an MBA in corporate entrepreneurship from Babson College and master’s degrees in computer science from both Boston University and Harvard University. As a visionary leader, he builds strategic roadmaps, mentors global architecture teams, and drives research initiatives—making him a trusted advisor at the intersection of AI, cloud platforms, and business strategy.