Acing a systems designs interview is crucial to moving up in your software engineering career. Even an experienced software engineer will benefit from extra preparation before heading into a systems design interview. But first things first: What is a systems design interview?
The systems design interview is one component of the interview process for software development and engineering roles. It’s usually conducted later on in the process and uses open-ended questions to encourage an applicant to explain how they arrived at the best possible solutions, leading employers to better understand the applicant’s thought process.
Job search site Indeed describes a systems design interview as an opportunity for programmers, designers, developers, and software engineers to showcase their problem-solving ability, analytical skills, and expertise in designing systems.
The interview also assesses how well an applicant works in a team and their approach to creating systems that help potential clients. The applicant’s performance makes or breaks their chances of landing the job.
Whether you’re applying for your first software engineer job or working towards a senior engineer position, a systems design interview is an exciting challenge you’ll encounter at least once in your tech career. If you’re facing this anytime soon, SystemsExpert is an effective online course offered by AlgoExpert that fully prepares a learner for this professional undertaking.
AlgoExpert now offers SystemsExpert, an online course that fully prepares software engineers to ace a systems design interview.
Check it out here.What Is SystemsExpert?
AlgoExpert is an online platform that fully prepares learners for technical interviews through curated questions, video tutorials, assessments, and mock interviews. The platform is the brainchild of Clement Mihailescu, who came up with the idea while preparing for a technical interview at Google. After scouring the Internet for useful interview resources, he realized the need for a single online destination that offered thorough technical interview training.
Today, AlgoExpert also offers SystemsExpert, an online course that prepares applicants specifically for systems design interviews. This course is geared towards current programmers getting ready for systems design interviews at FAANG-level companies. Put another way, the course assumes that the learner already has experience in coding and systems design.
What to Expect from the SystemsExpert Course
SystemsExpert has several important features.
1. Systems Design Fundamentals for Stronger Foundations
It has a Systems Design Fundamentals portion that comprises 25 video-based modules that build off each other, with each module discussing a key concept in systems design. Students learn the building blocks of systems design such as distributed computing, reliability engineering, information storage, and systems architecture.
They also explore other concepts that include the client-server model, network protocols, and load balancers.
2. Comprehensive Video Explanations and Real Code Examples
Each concept is thoroughly discussed through high-resolution videos that include real code examples when necessary. These examples go beyond teaching theoretical knowledge and give learners an extra layer of applied knowledge and understanding of key concepts.
3. Hand-Picked Questions for Practical Experience
The course also offers many opportunities to exercise problem-solving skills. SystemsExpert believes that practice makes perfect. More than that, it’s intelligent practice that makes perfect. Through consistent repetition, the learner gets used to answering any type of question that might be asked during the interview.
SystemsExpert includes 13 hand-picked systems design interview questions that cover a variety of systems. Learners are exposed to multiple systems to ensure sufficient experience in answering different types of questions. Each practice question comes with a detailed video mock interview of the solution that gives the learner a clear picture of how the answer came to be.
4. Robust Workspace Environment
Another notable feature of SystemsExpert is the robust environment it provides learners to use for practice. It offers an interactive multi-pane layout workspace that can be resized as needed. This allows learners to organize their workspace in a way that works best for them. The environment provides:
- An HTML-enabled scratchpad
- A full-length video mock interview that shares the solution in the ideal manner it should be delivered in an interview
- An accompanying text-based walk-through and review to reinforce key concepts taught in the course
The written walk-through gives learners the opportunity for extra review after watching the video.
5. Expansive Glossary for Easier Retention
The course also includes an expansive glossary added to the integrated work environment. It breaks down important information into smaller chunks and makes key terms easy to remember and learn. The glossary is toggleable and searchable, allowing users to review and reference relevant concepts as needed.
6. Curated Systems Design Quiz to Solidify Your Skills
SystemsExpert has a 50-question quiz to test the learner’s understanding of systems design concepts and technologies covered by the course. To pass the quiz, a learner should possess in-depth knowledge and a keen understanding of the critical concepts of systems design.
7. Certificate of Success
To wrap up the entire course, a learner earns a certificate of success from AlgoExpert if they pass the SystemsExpert quiz with at least a 90 percent score. In summary, SystemsExpert covers all the skills needed to design scalable, real-world applications and pass a systems design interview with flying colors.
SystemsExpert Course Student Reviews
SystemsExpert has helped thousands of learners worldwide ace their own systems design interviews and move forward in their tech careers.
“I would like to thank you immensely for your content, especially SystemsExpert. Your superb content helped me to crack Microsoft. This was my fourth attempt at Microsoft. Before this, I got rejected by Google (once) and Amazon (twice). Your narration of each and every topic is awesome and very easy to understand. The topics covered are also great. Thank you again for the content. Keep on adding more,” said Shoibal, now a Senior Software Engineer at Microsoft.
Among its other users are engineers already working at FAANG companies or those who have recently landed jobs in one of those companies.
“AlgoExpert succeeds in a key area that other similar platforms fail by putting an emphasis on explaining the thought-process of each question. I’m not the type who wants to try and memorize 500 questions in hopes that my interview questions are ones that I have seen before—I want to really understand the concepts and patterns that would help me solve ANY question.”
“AlgoExpert and SystemsExpert do a superb job of providing in-depth explanations of the patterns and thoughts you should use to arrive at the correct solution, no matter the algorithm or design problem. I put my time and trust in AlgoExpert, and I now have a job at Facebook to show for it. Highly recommended!” said another review from Nick, a Rotational Software Engineer at Facebook.
The SystemsExpert course allows engineers to maximize their current knowledge and gives them additional information in areas that need improvement.
“I’m glad I came across AlgoExpert. I have never faced any systems design interviews before, but here I am. I landed on Google (L5) with 4.5 years of experience. I also got offers from a few other companies for the same level. It took only one month to prepare with the great content of AlgoExpert,” shared Sham, who is working as a Senior Software Engineer at Google.
“Thank you so much for creating such great content and helping us to accelerate the software engineering journey. I highly recommend SystemsExpert for anyone planning to land on FAANG and similar companies.”
These are just a few of the testimonials that attest to the effectiveness of SystemsExpert. Thanks to this innovative online platform, applicants no longer need to work through different online resources to prepare for the interview on their own.
Ace Your Systems Design Interview
Over 80,000 customers worldwide have used AlgoExpert and its products to ace different kinds of technical interviews. Not only do its courses prepare learners for the interview, but they also provide fundamental knowledge and skills software engineers can apply and use in their new roles after landing the job.
If you’re interested in SystemsExpert and are preparing for a systems design interview, make sure to check out the free design fundamentals videos and free interview questions to see if this is the right course for you.
About us: Career Karma is a platform designed to help job seekers find, research, and connect with job training programs to advance their careers. Learn about the CK publication.
