Think Like an Engineer
The Weekend Deep-Dive: A Comprehensive Senior Engineering Study A Dev Weekends Course — devweekends.comThis is a structured, opinionated, experience-driven course that covers everything a working software engineer should be able to think about, talk about, act on, and reason through. Every section follows one pattern: understand the concept, know why it matters, explain it in 3 to 5 points, and ground it in real examples.
This is not a coding bootcamp. There are no exercises or assignments. This is a thinking course — it teaches you to reason like a senior engineer, to see trade-offs where others see solutions, and to ask the right questions before writing a line of code.
How to Use This Guide
- Weekend Study (12 hours)
- Interview Prep
- On-the-Job Reference
- Study Group
Go front to back. Read each section, pause on the interview questions, and try to answer them before reading the answer. Follow the “Further reading” links for any topic that feels weak.
Fast Tracks
4-Hour Fast Track (Interview Cramming):| Hour | Sections | Focus |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Reliability & Principles, Design Patterns | Resilience patterns, Architecture, Microservices |
| 2 | APIs & Databases, Caching & Observability | Data systems, Cache strategies, Monitoring |
| 3 | Messaging & Concurrency, Networking & Deployment | Async systems, Release engineering |
| 4 | Cloud & Trade-Offs, Answer Framework, Case Studies | Engineering judgment, Real-world scenarios |
Weekend Schedule
Saturday (6 hours)| Time | Section | Topics |
|---|---|---|
| Hour 1 | Auth & Security | Authentication, Authorization, Identity, OWASP Top 10 |
| Hour 2 | Performance & Scalability | Latency, Throughput, Sharding, Autoscaling |
| Hour 3 | Reliability & Engineering Principles | SLOs, Circuit Breakers, SOLID, Technical Debt |
| Hour 4 | Design Patterns & Architecture | Strategy, CQRS, Event Sourcing, Microservices |
| Hour 5 | APIs, Databases, Caching & Observability | REST/gRPC, Indexing, Cache Patterns, Tracing |
| Hour 6 | Testing, Logging & Versioning | Test Pyramid, Audit Logs, Schema Versioning |
| Time | Section | Topics |
|---|---|---|
| Hour 7 | Messaging, Concurrency & State | Kafka, Threading, State Machines |
| Hour 8 | Networking & Deployment | DNS, Load Balancers, Blue-Green, CI/CD |
| Hour 9 | Compliance, Cost & Debugging | GDPR, FinOps, Incident Response |
| Hour 10 | Multi-Tenancy, DDD & Documentation | Isolation, Bounded Contexts, ADRs |
| Hour 11 | Leadership, Execution & Infrastructure | Product Thinking, Kubernetes, IaC |
| Hour 12 | Cloud, Trade-Offs, DSA & Answer Framework | Cloud Architecture, Engineering Judgment |
Complete Guide
Core Engineering Knowledge
Auth & Security
Authentication, OAuth, OIDC, SSO, MFA, Zero-Trust, OWASP Top 10, Threat Modeling.
Performance & Scalability
Latency, Throughput, Sharding, Backpressure, Autoscaling, Connection Pooling.
Reliability & Principles
SLOs, Error Budgets, Circuit Breakers, Chaos Engineering, SOLID, DRY, KISS.
Design Patterns & Architecture
Strategy, Repository, Factory, Hexagonal, CQRS, Event Sourcing, Microservices, Sagas.
APIs & Databases
REST, gRPC, GraphQL, Indexing, Transactions, CAP/PACELC, Replication, Migrations.
Caching & Observability
Cache Patterns, Invalidation, Stampede Protection, Logs, Metrics, Traces, Alerting.
Systems & Operations
Testing, Logging & Versioning
Test Pyramid, Contract Testing, Structured Logging, Audit Trails, Schema Versioning.
Messaging, Concurrency & State
Kafka, RabbitMQ, Delivery Semantics, Race Conditions, Deadlocks, State Machines.
Networking & Deployment
DNS, HTTP/2/3, Load Balancers, Rolling/Blue-Green/Canary, Feature Flags, CI/CD.
Compliance, Cost & Debugging
GDPR, HIPAA, FinOps, Cloud Cost Optimization, Incident Response, Postmortems.
Multi-Tenancy, DDD & Docs
Isolation Models, Domain-Driven Design, Bounded Contexts, ADRs, Runbooks.
Leadership, Execution & Infra
Product Thinking, Technical Debt, Estimation, Containers, Kubernetes, IaC.
Strategy & Frameworks
Cloud, Problem Framing & Trade-Offs
Cloud Architecture, Well-Architected Framework, Requirement Analysis, Engineering Judgment.
DSA & The Answer Framework
Data Structures, Algorithm Patterns, the 8-Step Framework for Any Engineering Question.
Capacity Planning, Git & Pipelines
Back-of-Envelope Math, Git Workflows, Code Review, Batch/Stream Processing.
Reference & Reading List
Cross-Cutting Concerns, Interviewer Insights, Misconceptions, Essential Books, Tool Index.
Think, Speak & Act Like an Engineer
The Engineering Mindset
First Principles, Systems Thinking, Trade-Off Analysis, Mental Models, Decision-Making.
Communication & Soft Skills
Design Docs, Technical Presentations, Code Review Communication, Conflict Resolution.
Career Growth
Engineering Levels, Senior vs Staff+ Path, Building Influence, Interview Strategy.
Modern Engineering Practices
AI-Assisted Development, Platform Engineering, Observability-Driven Development, Security.
Practice & Quick Reference
System Design Practice
5 Guided System Design Problems with Step-by-Step Engineering Thinking.
Real-World Case Studies
6 Production War Stories: Black Friday Meltdowns, Data Migrations, Security Breaches.
Quick Reference Cheatsheet
Latency Numbers, Decision Matrices, Comparison Tables — Everything at a Glance.