Systems Architecture & Distributed Systems Topics
Large-scale distributed system design, service architecture, microservices patterns, global distribution strategies, scalability, and fault tolerance at the service/application layer. Covers microservices decomposition, caching strategies, API design, eventual consistency, multi-region systems, and architectural resilience patterns. Excludes storage and database optimization (see Database Engineering & Data Systems), data pipeline infrastructure (see Data Engineering & Analytics Infrastructure), and infrastructure platform design (see Cloud & Infrastructure).
Real-Time and Streaming System Design
Designing low-latency, always-on systems: real-time communication (WebSockets, long-polling, server-sent events), presence and pub/sub fan-out, live streaming and video delivery, and real-time collaboration. Covers latency budgets, connection scaling, and delivering ordered updates to many concurrent clients. The design surface for chat, feeds, streaming, and collaborative apps.
Game Systems Architecture and Multiplayer Networking
Structuring interactive game systems: the game loop, entity-component-system design, authoritative-server versus client-side prediction, matchmaking, lag compensation, and scalable game backends. Covers state synchronization for real-time multiplayer and the latency and consistency tradeoffs unique to games. The systems-architecture surface for game engineering.
Stateful Service Design and State Management
Handling state in otherwise-distributed systems: stateful versus stateless service design, session management, sticky routing, in-memory state with durable backing, and state replication. Covers where state should live, how to recover it after a crash, and the scaling constraints stateful services impose. Complements the stateless-first default with when and how to hold state.
Caching Strategies and Distributed Caching
Using caches to reduce latency and load: cache-aside, read-through, write-through, and write-behind patterns, TTLs, eviction policies, and distributed caches such as Redis or Memcached. Covers cache invalidation, stampede and thundering-herd protection, and the consistency tradeoffs of caching. Focuses on where and how to cache across tiers.
API and Interface Design for Distributed Services
Designing the contracts between services and clients: REST, gRPC, and GraphQL tradeoffs, versioning and backward compatibility, pagination, rate limiting, and idempotent endpoints. Covers request/response modeling, error contracts, and API gateway responsibilities. Focuses on the interface layer that ties distributed components together, not internal data schemas.
Content Delivery and Edge Networking
Serving content and computation close to users: CDN architecture, edge caching, cache-control and purge strategies, and edge computing versus centralized cloud processing. Covers origin shielding, geo-routing, and the tradeoffs of pushing logic to the edge for latency-sensitive workloads. Application-layer content distribution rather than raw network engineering.