Problem-First AWS System Design Academy

Master AWS System Design Through Real-World Architecture Case Studies

Deconstruct 29+ real enterprise production architectures. Master AWS services, cost trade-offs, failure recovery modes, and scalability patterns with interactive Mermaid diagrams.

11 Core Modules
29+ Production Case Studies
45+ AWS Services Covered
100% Mermaid Topologies
Curated Career Paths

Select Your Architecture Track

Follow targeted learning tracks tailored for your engineering role

Serverless Architect Track

Master event-driven microservices, Lambda concurrency, DynamoDB single-table design, and API Gateway proxies.

Module 1 Module 3 Module 4 Module 10
Start Serverless Track →

DevOps & Cloud SRE Track

Automate zero-downtime GitOps pipelines, blue/green traffic shifting, VPC isolation, and self-healing telemetry.

Module 2 Module 5 Module 8 Module 9
Start DevOps Track →

Data & Analytics Engineer Track

Build real-time Kinesis stream pipelines, S3 Lakehouse partitioning with Glue & Athena, and Redshift datamarts.

Module 0 Module 4 Module 6 Module 10
Start Data Track →
Comprehensive Curriculum

All 11 Learning Modules

View Learning Roadmap
Module 0 Beginner 3h

Foundations & Mental Models

Master the mental models required to evaluate cloud architectures. Learn how AWS Regions, Availability Zones, and Edge locations interact, how the Shared Responsibility Model shapes security, and how to read complex system topologies.

AWS Global InfrastructureIAMAWS Budgets +2
Module 1 Beginner 4h

Global Static Website & CDN Architecture

Learn how to build sub-50ms latency static websites and Single Page Applications (SPAs) with 99.99% availability using Amazon S3, CloudFront CDN, Route 53 DNS, and AWS Certificate Manager (ACM).

Amazon S3Amazon CloudFrontAmazon Route 53 +2
Module 2 Beginner 5h

Compute Fundamentals & Auto Scaling

Master horizontal scaling and compute elasticity on AWS. Learn how to architect multi-AZ compute clusters behind Application Load Balancers (ALBs), configure dynamic Auto Scaling policies, and decouple server state.

Amazon EC2Application Load Balancer (ALB)Auto Scaling Groups (ASG) +2
Module 3 Intermediate 6h

Serverless Architecture & Event-Driven Systems

Master event-driven serverless architecture on AWS. Learn how to architect zero-idle-cost backends using Lambda, Amazon API Gateway, Amazon SQS buffering, and EventBridge choreographies.

AWS LambdaAmazon API GatewayAmazon SQS +3
Module 4 Intermediate 6h

Databases & Data Persistence

Master database selection on AWS. Compare Amazon RDS (PostgreSQL/MySQL), Amazon Aurora Serverless v2, DynamoDB single-table design, and ElastiCache Redis under extreme concurrency and throughput.

Amazon RDS (PostgreSQL/MySQL)Amazon Aurora Serverless v2Amazon DynamoDB +2
Module 5 Intermediate 6h

Networking & Security Foundation

Master zero-trust cloud network architecture. Learn how to design multi-tier VPCs, route tables, Security Groups, NACLs, NAT Gateways, VPC Interface Endpoints (PrivateLink), and AWS KMS envelope encryption.

Amazon VPCAWS IAMAWS Key Management Service (KMS) +3
Module 6 Advanced 7h

Data Lakes, Analytics & Batch Processing

Master big data analytics on AWS. Learn how to ingest high-velocity event streams with Kinesis, build an S3 Lakehouse with Glue Data Catalog, run ad-hoc serverless SQL queries with Athena, and power BI data warehouses with Redshift.

Amazon S3 LakehouseAWS GlueAmazon Athena +2
Module 7 Advanced 8h

Containers & Modern Application Platforms

Master modern containerization on AWS. Compare serverless container orchestration (AWS Fargate) with Kubernetes on AWS (EKS), container security in ECR, service discovery with AWS Cloud Map, and ALB path-based ingress routing.

Amazon ECS (AWS Fargate)Amazon EKS (Kubernetes)Amazon ECR +3
Module 8 Advanced 6h

DevOps, CI/CD & Infrastructure as Code

Master automated delivery pipelines and declarative cloud provisioning on AWS. Learn how to architect end-to-end CI/CD with CodePipeline, CodeBuild, CodeDeploy, AWS CDK (TypeScript), and Terraform.

AWS CodePipelineAWS CodeBuildAWS CodeDeploy +3
Module 9 Advanced 6h

Observability, Monitoring & Reliability

Master production telemetry on AWS. Learn how to correlate Amazon CloudWatch Metrics/Logs/Alarms, AWS X-Ray distributed traces, CloudTrail audit trails, and AWS Config compliance rules to minimize MTTR.

Amazon CloudWatch (Metrics & Logs)AWS X-RayAWS CloudTrail +2
Module 10 Expert 12h

Advanced Real-World Capstone Systems

Deconstruct complex, multi-service enterprise architectures based on real-world industry leaders. Study before-and-after transformations, multi-region active-active topologies, zero-RPO/RTO ledgers, and million-device IoT pipelines.

Amazon Route 53 ArcAmazon DynamoDB Global TablesAWS Elemental MediaConvert +3
The 6 Pillars Alignment

Ground Your Cloud Decisions in First Principles

Every case study in the AWS Guide is evaluated against the 6 pillars of the AWS Well-Architected Framework: Operational Excellence, Security, Reliability, Performance Efficiency, Cost Optimization, and Sustainability.