Top 10 System Design Courses for Beginners and Experienced Developers in 2024 - Best of Lot

Hello guys, if you are preparing for System design interview and looking for best online courses to learn essential System design concepts like load balancing, API Gateway, scalability, Microservices architecture as well as learn how to solve popular System design questions like how to design YouTube, WhatsApp, Parking Lot, Library System as well when to use NoSQL and SQL then you have come to the right place.  In the past, I have shared best System Design Books, Free System design courses,  System design prep guide, and System Interview Questions and in this article, I am going to share best System Design Courses for beginners and experienced Software Engineer to level up their System Design skills in 2024. 

But, before we get to the best System design courses that will teach you everything you need to know about system design, Software Design, and System Design interviews, let me tell you a little bit about what is System Design and why it's important for a Software Engineer to learn about System design.

As the name suggests, Systems design is basically the process of designing a System or Software to solve a particular real life problem like how to design a messaging broker like Kafka. It involves requirement gathering like how the system should behave, does it need to support multiple consumers etc?

It also involves high level design and low level design and you will talk about modules, architecture, components, interface, and data for a system based on a specific set of requirements. It can also refer to the process of defining, developing, and designing systems. 

These designs have to satisfy the specific needs of a company or an organization.

As a Software Engineer or System designer, you have to make use of all the different modeling languages for expressing the information and knowledge in the structure of a system. This system has to be defined by a consistent set of rules and definitions. 

It can also be defined in textual or graphical modeling languages like the Unified Modeling Language, UML, Flowchart, Business Process Modeling Notation, and Systems Modeling Language.

There are also different types of design methods that you can make use of. They include Architectural Design, Logical Design, and Physical Design.

The list also includes best system design interview courses from Udemy, Educative, ByteByteGo, DesignGuru, Exponent, ZTM Academy, and other popular online platforms. Also, here is a nice System Design Template from Design Guru to quickly revise essential System design concepts for interviews. 

10 Best System Design Courses for Software Engineers in 2024

Here is a list of best online courses to prepare for System design interview. I have included different kind of resources like video based online courses, interactive system design courses, text-based courses, hands-on project based courses,  case studies as well as both free and paid system design courses which you can join to prepare well for System Design interviews. 

1. Mastering the System Design Interview by Frank Kane  [Udemy]

This is a great course that will help you take your system design skills to another level. This course is created by none other than Frank Kane who is not only one of the most popular Udemy instructor but also an ex Amazon hiring manager and in this course he will share insider tips to do well on System Design Interview. 

You will be able to do this by understanding what they can expect from a system design interview. The course will teach you how to land a high-paying system design job. You will also learn what kind of programming skills you need and the different types of questions you can expect in a system design interview. 

By knowing these tips you will minimize the mistake most people during System design interview and improve your chances. 

This is also one of the most affordable and popular Udemy course for System Design Interview and more than 67,000 people have already joined this course to crack their system design interview and it has impressive 4.6 rating which is amazing.  

I highly recommend this course to everyone who wants to do well on System design interview. You can get it for just $10 on Udemy sales which happens every now and then. 

Here is the link to join this course -  Mastering the System Design Interview 

2  System Design Interview – An insider's guide ByteByteGo by Alex Hu

When you are preparing for System design interview then you must have come across this name "Alex Hu" or "Alex Wu", he is one of the best expert when it comes to teaching System design concepts. 

Alex has authored one of the most popular system design book,  System Design Interview – An insider's guide, which is trusted by thousands of people worldwide, but not many people know Alex's system design course on ByteByteGo.

This is a text-based course that will teach you everything you need to know about system design along with preparing you for system design interviews from absolute scratch. In this way, it is absolutely perfect for complete beginners.

It is a perfect starting guide for beginners looking to enter the amazing world of system design. 

You will also learn how to solve common System Design Problems like how to design a video stream service like Netflix or YouTube and How to design a messaging application like Facebook or WhatsApp.  You can also use my discount code JALJAD to get 10% discount.

Here is the link to join this course - System Design Interview ByteByteGo – An insider's guide

3. Grokking The System Design Interview [Design Guru]

DesignGurus.io is another platform which have impressive System design courses for both beginners and experienced developers. This is a one of the best System design interview course you can find on Internet. 

This is also the fist System design interview course I come across which really teaches System design concepts which you need to know to learn those tough System design interviews. 

This course is created by Arslan Ahmed and his team, a group of system design experts who have worked on FAANG and knows in and out about how to create scalable software and how to clear system design interview on these companies.  

Arslan himself is ex Facebook and ex Microsoft so he know what it takes to crack System design interview on FAANG companies. 

They will teach you everything you need to know about system designing along with grokking from absolute scratch. In this way, it is absolutely perfect for complete beginners. It is a perfect starting guide for beginners looking to enter the amazing world of system design. 

Course Duration: 3 hours

Course Rating: 4.6 stars out of 5

Course Instructor: Design Guru

Course Price: $20 per month

You can either buy this course individually or you can join Design Guru where they provide free updates with lifetime access. They also have many bundles combining there multiple system design and coding courses.  I recommend this system design interview bundle as it contain right courses for system design interviews. 

4. Grokking Modern System Design For Software Engineers And Managers

After Design Guru moved their Grokking the System design and Grokking the Advanced Design interview courses from Educative, they created this new course which is more like a replacement for both of this course. 

Since both the course which moved out to Design Guru was best selling courses, Educative created this awesome course to fill the gap.

This course will act as a great brief introduction to the amazing world of modern system design. It is perfect for beginners as you will learn about system design from absolute scratch. You will learn exactly what system design is and why is it used. 

Course Duration: 26 hours

Lessons: 175 lessons

Course Rating: 4.5 stars out of 5

Course Instructor: Educative

Course Price: $14.9 per month

This is one of the best and most comprehensive System Design Interview course on Educative which also provide solution to many popular System Design questions like designing YouTube, Designing Twitter, along with how to approach these problems from scratch.

5. Grokking The Advanced System Design Interview [DesignGurus.io]

In this fantastic course, you will learn about all the core features of advanced system design. You will also become a very advanced system designer. You will be able to master both system design and grokking. 

In this course you will learn advanced System design topics like HDFS, Kafka, Cassandra, GFS, BigTable, Chubby, data structures, frameworks, libraries and system design patterns like heartbeat, CAP Theorem, High Water Mark, Gossip protocol and much more.

By the end of this course, you will become an expert system designer. 

Course Duration: 2 hours

Course Rating: 4.6 stars 

Course Instructor: Design Gurus

Course Price: $20 per month

This is also the second part of the Grokking the System Design Interview and its designed to provide you more practice with even tougher system design problem and how to leverage advanced techniques in system design to solve them.

6. Grokking The Object-Oriented Design Interview [DesignGuru.io]

Grokking the Object Oriented Design Interview" is a comprehensive course designed for beginners, requiring a study time of 21 hours across 25 lessons and featuring 89 playgrounds. With a student base of 50,119, this course addresses the challenges engineers face in object-oriented design interviews (OODI). 

The difficulty arises from the intricate nature of designing complex systems and the unstructured format of OODI, making even experienced engineers uneasy. The course, curated by Design Gurus, a team of hiring managers from top tech companies like Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Amazon, provides a holistic approach to mastering OODI. 

It encompasses carefully selected case studies commonly posed in interviews, offering a deep understanding of various object-oriented design scenarios.

Although code is not the primary focus, the course includes Java and Python examples throughout. Covering topics such as UML, use case diagrams, class diagrams, and practical exercises like designing a Library Management System or an Online Shopping System for Amazon, the course ensures a thorough preparation for OODI. Get ready to dive into the world of object-oriented design with this invaluable guide to ace your next interview

Course Duration: 21 hours

Course Rating: 4.4 stars out of 5

Course Instructor: Educative

Course Price: $20 per month or $49 one tie

In short,  is a great course that will help you take your skills in object-oriented system design to another level. You will be able to do this by using object-oriented system design rather than the traditional system design techniques. The course will teach you how to pass your system design interview. You will also learn how to get jobs at Google. Facebook, Microsoft, and Amazon. 

7. Machine Learning System Design [Educative.io]

This is an exciting course that will teach you everything you need to know about the basics of machine learning system design in the shortest time possible. The course will also teach you everything you need to know about machine learning and system design. 

Course Duration: 1 hour

Course Rating: 4.6 stars out of 5

Course Instructor: Khang Phem

Course Price: $20 per month

If you are preparing for Machine Learning interviews then this course can help you to prepare better for how to solve Machine Learning System design questions like recommended movies or recommended ads etc.

8. System Design Interview: Doordash [Educative]

In this fantastic course, you will learn everything you need to know about the different components of system design for getting hired by Doordash. You will start the course by learning about the basics of system design. 

Then you will move on to understand what exactly is system design. By the end of this course, you will be able to get a very good job at Doordash.  

Course Duration: 2 hours

Course Rating: 4.5 stars out of 5

Course Instructor: Partha Pratim Sanyal

Course Price: $20 per month

If you are looking for a case-study type of course where you go step by step from start to end to solve a real world System design problem in depth then you will love this course. You can either join this course individually or you can take Educative Unlimited subscription to join this course along with other Educative coding interview courses.

9. Grokking The Machine Learning Interview [Educative.io]

This fantastic System design course will help you polish your machine learning skills. You will be able to do this by grokking your way to getting a very good machine learning job. 

Course Duration: 1 hour

Course Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Course Instructor: Educative

Course Price: $20 per month

If you are preparing for Machine Learning Engineer interview or AI Engineer interview then you should join this course to prepare for System Design Machine Learning questions like designing a recommendation system which uses Machine Learning and AI.

10. Master the Coding Interview: System Design + Architecture [Part 1]

This is another awesome course to learn System design for coding interviews in 2024. This course is created by Andrei Negaoie and his team like Yihua Zhang on Zero to Mastery Academy. 

This is a bootcamp style course which will teach you all essential System design concepts like scalability, both horizontal and vertical scalability, SQL vs NoSQL, Load Balancers and API Gateway, Microservices and Monolithics and so on. 

Course Duration: 4 hour

Course Rating: 5 stars out of 5

Course Instructor: Zero to Mastery Academy

Course Price: $39 per month

This is also a good course for anyone who wants to become a Senior Software engineer or Software architect as you will learn how to make design tradeoffs which is a key quality for any senior Software engineer. Along the way, you will also develop skill to come with the optimal solution for any real life system design problem. 

Overall a comprehensive and up-to-date course to learn System Design for interviews. Btw, you would need a ZTM membership to watch this course which costs around $39 per month but also provides access to many super engaging and useful courses like his Python course and JavaScript Web Projects: 20 Projects to Build Your Portfolio course. You can also use my code FRIENDS10 to get a 10% discount on any subscription you choose. 

System Design Interview Cheat Sheets

And, here are a couple of nice System Design Cheats from Exponent and ByteByteGo to quickly revise the essential System Design concepts and topics. You can use these cheat sheet to also structure your answer when answering any System Design questions on interviews:

And, here is another great System Design cheat Sheet from ByteByteGo, one of my favorite website to learn System Design concepts and case studies:

That's all about the best System Design Interview courses for beginners and experienced developers. If you liked this list of the 10 of the best system design courses for interviews, feel free to share it with your friends and family. I have no doubt that this course will transform you from a complete novice to an expert system designer within a matter of weeks or months. 

You can also drop a comment if you have any doubts about the system design and we will get back to you in an instant.

 Other Programming Articles and Tutorials you may like

• How to Prepare for System Design Interview in 2024
• Top 5 Places to learn System design and Software design
• The Complete Java Developer RoadMap
• 5 Websites to learn Python for FREE
• Is ByteByteGo Really Worth it?
• Top 5 Websites to learn Java Coding for FREE
• Is Design Guru's System Design Course worth  it
• 10 Things Java Programmer Should Learn in 2024
• Top 5 Websites to Learn Linux in 2024
• 10 Websites to learn Git and GitHub for FREE
• 10 Reasons to Learn Python in 2024
• 5 Websites to learn Data Structure and Algorithms for FREE
• Top 5 Websites to Learn React.js in 2024
• 10 Reasons to Learn Java Programming languages
• 5 Websites to learn SQL Online for FREE
• Top 5 Java Frameworks to Learn in 2024
• 10 Frameworks Java and Web Developer should learn
• 21 Websites to Learn Coding Online for FREE
• The Complete DevOps Engineer RoadMap
• 50+ Data Structure Interview Questions for Programmers

Thanks for reading this article so far. If you know any excellent system design and software design course or online platforms to learn System Design and Software Designing, especially for beginners, which you think complements these two websites, then feel free to share. Everybody loves great  resources and happy learning System design.

P. S. - If you are looking for a free online course to learn System Design and Software design then I also suggest you to checkout this Case Studies for System Design Interviews free course on Udemy by Erdem. This 2-hour free course is great resource to prepare for System design interviews in 2024.