T1 · JUNIOR
Design semantic search for a docs site
Embeddings, a vector index, and a golden set. The retrieval warm-up.
30 min
AI SYSTEM DESIGN · FOUNDATIONS → FRONTIER
Design the systems behind the models.
48 units · 25 case studies · a tutor that watches your whiteboard.
VIEWING AS
YOUR MIXtuned for Mid · shifts with persona
Read half. Design half.
50%read, watch, grok·50%design, critique, defend
50/50
LEARNPRACTICE
IF YOU SWITCHSame course. Different weight.Compare views
T1 · JUNIOR
Design smart compose (email autocomplete)
Sub-100ms LLM completions at keystroke rate. Latency is the product.
30 min
T1 · JUNIOR
Design a FAQ support chatbot
Grounded answers, guardrails, and a human handoff.
30 min
T1 · JUNIOR
Design a spam & toxicity classifier
Classic ML under class imbalance. Choose the right metric first.
25 min
T1 · JUNIOR
Design a meeting summarizer
Long transcripts, structured notes, factuality checks. Async by nature.
25 min
T2 · MID
Design 'chat with your docs' for an enterprise
The most-asked GenAI question. Retrieval quality, permissions, evals.
45 min
T2 · MID
Design video recommendations (TikTok 'For You')
The classic ML flagship. Two-stage pipeline, features, cold start.
45 min
T2 · MID
Design fraud detection (Stripe)
An adversary in the loop. Fresh features, skew, delayed labels.
40 min
T2 · MID
Design ad click prediction
The Meta staple. Features, leakage, calibrated probabilities, A/B.
40 min
T2 · MID
Design AI-powered product search
Hybrid retrieval, rerank, generated answers. Search that cites.
40 min
T2 · MID
Design an ETA / delivery-time prediction system
The regression staple. Geospatial features, real-time traffic, freshness.
40 min
T2 · MID
Design a document extraction pipeline
PDFs to typed JSON at scale. Schemas, retries, error analysis.
35 min
T3 · SENIORabove your band
Design ChatGPT
The flagship. Streaming, memory, moderation, GPU serving, cost.
60 min
T3 · SENIORabove your band
Design an AI coding assistant (Copilot)
Tab-completion latency + chat depth. Context is the scarce resource.
50 min
T3 · SENIORabove your band
Design an LLM evaluation platform
Judges, golden sets, CI gates. The system that grades the systems.
50 min
T3 · SENIORabove your band
Design an inference system for a single GPU fleet
Anthropic's actual question. Batching, KV memory, goodput under SLOs.
50 min
T3 · SENIORabove your band
Design visual search (Pinterest Lens)
Image embeddings at billions scale. Index choice, rerank, freshness.
45 min
T3 · SENIORabove your band
Design real-time recommendations
Session-aware recs in seconds. Streaming features, freshness SLAs.
50 min
Design like the level above you.Switch to Senior to unlock the next tier.