🚀 System Design Roadmap (Beginner → Advanced)
- mirglobalacademy
- Nov 27, 2025
- 2 min read
Below is the clearest and most practical roadmap for System Design, broken down into HLD (High-Level Design) and LLD (Low-Level Design) — perfect for interviews, DSA learners, and real-world architecture.
🔵 PHASE 1 — Foundations (Beginner)
✔️ Learn these first
What is System Design?
Functional vs Non-functional requirements
CAP Theorem
ACID & BASE
Horizontal vs Vertical Scaling
Latency vs Throughput
Consistency models (Strong, Eventual, Weak)
Caching basics
Load Balancing basics
Client-Server model
⏳ Time: 5–7 days
🔵 PHASE 2 — High-Level Design (HLD)
HLD = Big Architecture of the system (bird’s-eye view) Focus on components, data flow, and high availability.
✔️ Must Learn
API Gateways
Load Balancers (L4 vs L7)
CDN
Reverse Proxy
Microservices vs Monolith
Message Queues (Kafka, RabbitMQ)
Databases
SQL vs NoSQL
Sharding, Replication, Partitioning
Cache Systems
Redis
Memcached
File Storage
S3
Blob Storage
Monitoring & Logging
Prometheus
Grafana
ELK
✔️ HLD Flow
Requirements Clarification
Define APIs
Plan the overall Architecture
Choose Database & Storage
Add Cache + Load Balancer
Add Asynchronous Processing
Discuss Failover, Auto Scaling
Bottlenecks & Trade-offs
✔️ Example HLD: URL Shortener
Client → API Gateway → App Service → DB + Cache → Analytics Service
🔵 PHASE 3 — Low-Level Design (LLD)
LLD = Class diagrams + methods + relationships + detailed logic.
✔️ Must Learn LLD Topics
OOP Principles (SOLID)
Class Diagrams (UML)
Sequence Diagrams
Design Patterns:
Creational → Singleton, Factory, Builder
Structural → Adapter, Decorator, Facade
Behavioral → Strategy, Observer, Command
Interface Design
Database schema design
Entity Relationships (ERD)
API Contracts
Handling concurrency in code
Thread-safety
Caching at code-level
🔵 PHASE 4 — Deep Distributed Systems
✔️ Learn internal working of large-scale systems:
Consensus Algorithms
Raft
Paxos
Distributed Transactions
Event Sourcing
CQRS
Pub/Sub architecture
Distributed Logging
Vector Clocks
Gossip Protocol
Leader Election
🔵 PHASE 5 — Design Real-World Systems (Interview Practice)
⭐ Practice these
WhatsApp
YouTube
Uber
Twitter/X
TikTok
Netflix
Gmail
Google Drive
Load balancer
Rate Limiter
Notification System
Payment Gateway (Stripe-like)
🧩 HOW HLD & LLD CONNECT
HLD = What to build?
Big architecture
Storage decisions
Scaling strategy
Data flow
LLD = How to build?
Classes, methods
Objects, patterns
Code-level decisions
How each module interacts
✔ HLD is architecture✔ LLD is engineering
🔥 Complete Step-by-Step Learning Path (with Time Estimates)
Week 1 – Basics
Web fundamentals
Networking
SQL vs NoSQL
OOP + SOLID
Week 2 – HLD
Load Balancers
CDN
Caching
Queues
Microservices
Week 3 – LLD
UML
Design Patterns
Class + Sequence Diagrams
How to convert HLD → LLD
Week 4 – Big Systems
Twitter
Instagram
WhatsApp
Uber
Netflix
Week 5 – Scaling
Partitioning
Replication
Event-Driven systems
Kafka + Redis
🧱 Visual Architecture (Simple)
HLD View
┌─────────────┐
User → LB → API Gateway → Microservices → DB Cluster → Cache
└─────────────┘
LLD View
✔️ Want me to generate?
🔽 I can generate for you:
A full System Design Syllabus
A 90-day plan
A PDF roadmap
HLD diagrams and LLD class diagrams
System design interview answers
Your practice plan for FAANG
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