I wrote down the 60 questions I wish someone had handed me years ago.
For a long time I thought system design was about memorizing architectures. Draw the boxes, name a database, sprinkle in a cache, done. Then I ended up in rooms where the interviewer just kept asking “why,” and the pretty diagrams stopped saving me.
The real work is in the tradeoffs. What breaks at 10x traffic, why you’d accept eventual consistency and what it quietly costs you later, whether a queue is solving the problem or just hiding it somewhere you’ll meet again at 3am.
None of that fits on a flashcard.
So the e-book is 60+ scenario-based questions instead. They start beginner-friendly and climb to the kind that make experienced engineers go quiet for a second. Each one drops you into a real situation and makes you reason through it, the way a sharp interviewer would. Or the way production does, with less mercy.
Two ways to use it:
<ul>
<li>Prepping for interviews? It’s reps on the questions that keep coming up.</li>
<li>Already building these systems? It’s a way to pressure-test what you assume you know.</li>
</ul>
It’s free. No email wall, no upsell at the end. Just the questions and the reasoning behind them.
Link’s below. One thing I’m curious about: which system design question did you walk in thinking you had cold, right until you didn’t?
<a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RZGN4VZgFc5w8LRkhpoXfpmtfB_n9hzY/view?usp=sharing" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow">https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RZGN4VZgFc5w8LRkhpoXfpmtfB_n9hzY/view?usp=sharing</a>
#SystemDesign #SoftwareEngineering #DistributedSystems #BackendEngineering

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Joud Awad

A free e-book of 60+ scenario-based system design interview questions, designed to go beyond memorizing architectures and focus on tradeoffs — like handling 10x traffic, eventual consistency costs, and queue usage patterns. Questions range from beginner-friendly to advanced, useful both for interview prep and for pressure-testing assumptions in production systems.

Free e-book with 60 scenario-based system design interview questions

Also, it would mean a lot to me if you could support my content and stay in touch 🙏
<ul>
<li>YouTube: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/@system-design-lab" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/@system-design-lab</a></li>
<li>LinkedIn: <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/joud-awad/" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow">https://www.linkedin.com/in/joud-awad/</a></li>
<li>Medium Blog: <a href="https://joudwawad.medium.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow">https://joudwawad.medium.com/</a></li>
<li>Substack: <a href="https://joudawad.substack.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow">https://joudawad.substack.com/</a></li>
</ul>

You are a rockstar man, this is a gold mine thank you so much for putting all of this in one place! this is really going to help me in my next interview

Just in time, thank you man for the series, the ebook and all the effort made to make this comes to live!

you are giving your efforts for free, You are legend man 🫡

Woah, this is really helpfull materials, thank you so much man. Really appreciate your work🫡.