System Design

System design is the fundamental backbone of modern softwareensuring reliability under heavy pressure. This book serves as your essential guide to turning basic code into resilient, professional-grade distributed systems that power today’s digital world.

This book systematically leads you through core scalability principles, comparing vertical and horizontal scaling while optimizing performance through latency and throughput metrics. You will master database design by exploring SQL, NoSQL, and sharding strategies. This book provides the details of microservices using REST, gRPC, and GraphQL, alongside critical security protocols like OAuth and JWT to protect your infrastructure. You then apply these components to build real-world projects, including WhatsApp-style chat systems, URL shorteners, and scalable notification engines, before concluding with production best practices, monitoring, and AI trends.

By the end of this book, you will possess the technical confidence to architect high-concurrency applications and ace system design interviews. You will be fully equipped to design, secure, and scale enterprise-level solutions that handle millions of users with ease.

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN
● Understand core principles behind scalable, distributed system architectures.
● Design APIs, databases, caches, and message-driven components.
● Apply system design to real-world problems and case studies.
● Build reliable, fault-tolerant, high-performance production systems.
● Evaluate trade-offs and make confident architectural decisions.

WHO THIS BOOK IS FOR
This book is for software engineers, architects, and engineering managers building large-scale systems. It is ideal for interview preparation or leadership transitions. Readers should have basic programming knowledge and a fundamental understanding of how web servers and databases interact.

1. Introduction to System Design
2. Scalability and Performance Basics
3. Database Design for Scalable Systems
4. Load Balancing and Traffic Distribution
5. Message Queues and Event-driven Architecture
6. API Design and Microservices Architecture
7. Caching
8. Security in System Design
9. Designing a Real-time Chat System
10. Designing a URL Shortener
11. Designing a Notification System
12. Building Scalable Systems in Production Final Thoughts

Amardeep Vishwakarma is a seasoned technology leader with more than two decades of experience building high-performing engineering teams and large-scale distributed systems. Over the years, he has held leadership positions across prominent technology organizations, including Amazon, Naukri.com, Indian Express, and HT Media, where he led major platform transformations, payment architectures, and system modernization initiatives. His career spans roles from engineering leadership to CTO, giving him a deep understanding of both the technical and organizational challenges behind scalable system design.

He has worked extensively across e-commerce, fintech, classifieds, and digital media domains, architecting systems that serve millions of users with high reliability and performance. His expertise includes distributed systems, platform engineering, system design, organizational scaling, and technical strategy. In addition to his industry work, he actively mentors upcoming engineering leaders and participates in CTO mentorship programs, helping professionals grow into impactful leaders.

With a strong passion for simplifying complex technical concepts, Amardeep has written and spoken widely on system architecture, engineering leadership, and building teams that deliver at scale. This book reflects his practical, real-world approach to problem solving, built on years of hands-on experience navigating the challenges of high-scale systems in production.

Beyond his professional commitments, Amardeep enjoys sports, especially badminton, and follows cricket passionately. He continues to contribute to the tech community through writing, mentorship, and leadership development.