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Path 05 · full reference map

Staff-Level Systems Engineering

Large-scale architecture, reliability, performance, technical leadership, and communication developed through artifacts and operating practice.

9 modules70 topicsSelf-pacedStaff engineering roadmap

Prior practice · disclosed carefully

I am not starting this path at zero.

These claims come from résumé-backed work. They are intentionally generalized, so the site shows what I have applied without inventing public artifacts or exposing private systems.

Technical direction

Led technical design, cross-functional planning, and architecture decisions for real-time distributed systems.

Engineering enablement

Mentored engineers and shared distributed-systems, architecture, and implementation practices.

Observability

Implemented alerting, instrumentation, dashboards, evaluation traces, and systematic failure classification.

Published progress

16%

11 of 70 topics complete · updated with each site release

01

Quarter 01

Large-scale system design

Design for constraints, scale, and failure before implementation.

0/8
Consistency modelsNot yet published
ConsensusNot yet published
ShardingNot yet published
Event sourcing and CQRSNot yet published
Service boundariesNot yet published
Multi-region designNot yet published
Capacity planningNot yet published
Failure analysisNot yet published
02

Quarter 01

Architecture thinking

Evaluate technical choices in their organizational context.

0/8
Architecture decision recordsNot yet published
Evolutionary architectureNot yet published
Domain-driven designNot yet published
Hexagonal architectureNot yet published
Team cognitive loadNot yet published
Build-vs-buyNot yet published
Migration strategyNot yet published
Trade-off analysisNot yet published
03

Quarter 01

Reliability engineering

Treat reliability as a designed and operated property.

0/8
SLIs and SLOsNot yet published
Error budgetsNot yet published
Graceful degradationNot yet published
Chaos engineeringNot yet published
Incident commandNot yet published
PostmortemsNot yet published
Capacity and saturationNot yet published
Reliability reviewsNot yet published
04

Quarter 02

Performance engineering

Optimize from evidence across application, database, network, and OS.

0/8
ProfilingNot yet published
Flame graphsNot yet published
CPU and memoryNot yet published
Database query plansNot yet published
GC analysisNot yet published
Network latencyNot yet published
Load testingNot yet published
Performance budgetsNot yet published
05

Quarter 02

Data infrastructure

Reason about storage and movement at scale.

2/8
B-tree vs LSMNot yet published
Kafka internalsNot yet published
Stream processingPracticed · complete
Change data captureNot yet published
OLAP and columnar storagePracticed · complete
Lakehouse trade-offsNot yet published
Distributed transactionsNot yet published
Data lifecycleNot yet published
06

Quarter 02

Observability

Create systems that explain their own behavior.

3/8
Metrics, logs, and tracesPracticed · complete
OpenTelemetryNot yet published
Distributed tracingNot yet published
High-cardinality dataNot yet published
Alert designNot yet published
DashboardsPracticed · complete
Debugging workflowsPracticed · complete
Observability costsNot yet published
07

Quarter 03

Technical leadership

Multiply engineering quality through decisions and enablement.

3/8
Technical visionNot yet published
Architecture reviewsPracticed · complete
MentoringPracticed · complete
DelegationNot yet published
Leading without authorityNot yet published
Decision facilitationNot yet published
Cross-team alignmentPracticed · complete
Raising engineering standardsNot yet published
08

Quarter 04

Communication and influence

Make complex decisions clear to technical and non-technical audiences.

2/8
Design documentsPracticed · complete
RFCsNot yet published
Technical proposalsPracticed · complete
Executive summariesNot yet published
Stakeholder mappingNot yet published
Coalition buildingNot yet published
Tech-debt framingNot yet published
Presentation and narrativeNot yet published
09

Across the year

Architecture builds

Apply the path through reference-quality projects.

1/6
Fault-tolerant key-value storeNot yet published
Real-time data pipelinePracticed · complete
Distributed rate limiterNot yet published
Multi-region architectureNot yet published
Observability platformNot yet published
Multi-tenant event platformNot yet published