COURSE 01 · 100% FREE

Free Senior & Staff System Design Interview Prep

Learn what separates a Senior-level answer from a Staff-level answer — and build the foundation for AI system design interviews.

Start with the practice library →6 modules · 45 practice breakdowns · No login

Course overview

Most system design prep teaches you to name components. This course teaches you to reason like the engineer interviewers are actually looking for: someone who scopes ambiguity, defends tradeoffs with numbers, designs for failure, and owns the system in production. Every lesson ends by connecting the skill to an AI engineering interview, so the foundation you build here transfers directly to RAG, LLM, and AI infrastructure roles.

Who this is for

Senior engineers preparing for Staff interviews
Backend engineers moving into AI engineering
SDEs who know distributed systems but need to translate it for AI interviews
Engineers preparing for AI system design interviews

What you will learn

  • How to structure a system design answer under time pressure.
  • The specific signals interviewers use to separate Senior from Staff.
  • How to reason about reliability, failure modes, and operational ownership.
  • How every one of these skills maps onto AI engineering interviews.

Module list

Where the bar actually moves: depth of tradeoff reasoning, ownership, and influence beyond your own code.

Practice questions

Apply each module to a real, interview-grade question. Every breakdown is free.

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