📅 Master Timeline (24 weeks + 2 buffer)
Six lanes every week
🧩 DSA (Java, 2h/day) · 📖 Core (books/courses) · ⚙️ Internals (how it works underneath) · 🎯 Assignment (graded, builds Orbit) · 🔬 Lab (MIT-style) · 🧠 Cognitive (thinking drill) + a Saturday 🧩 pattern kata Full assignment specs:
Assignments - Phase N· Labs: Labs Index · Grade yourself with the Grading Rubric · Weekly review every Sunday
Phase 1: Foundations (W1–W4) → Phase 1 - Foundations · builds Orbit v0 - Building Blocks
W1 · 28 Sep – 4 Oct
- 🛠️ Setup: JDK 25, Go 1.25+, IDEs, Docker, Git/GitHub, Anki, LeetCode, Ollama · fill in the Skill Matrix
- 🧩 DSA: complexity, Java collections, arrays & hashing (15)
- 📖 Core: Java Advanced (modern Java, collections) · Operating Systems
- ⚙️ Internals: JVM Internals §1–3, §8 · Linux & OS Internals
- 🎯 A1 Concurrent KV store (Java) → Assignments - Phase 1
- 🔬 Lab: JOL memory layouts
- 🧩 Kata: Strategy + Factory · SOLID
- 🧠 Cognitive: Predict → verify lock-striping throughput
W2 · 5 – 11 Oct
- 🧩 DSA: two pointers, sliding window, prefix sums (18)
- 📖 Core: Concurrency · virtual threads · JCIP ch. 1–5
- ⚙️ Internals: JVM Internals §4–7 (GC, JMM, AQS, Loom)
- 🎯 A2 Thread pool + rate limiters (Java)
- 🔬 Lab: racy counter →
synchronized/AtomicLong/LongAdderunder JMH - 🧩 Kata: Builder (+ Go functional options) + Observer
- 🧠 Cognitive: Feynman teach-back on happens-before
W3 · 12 – 18 Oct
- 🧩 DSA: stack, monotonic stack, binary search on answer (18)
- 📖 Core: Go Advanced · Learning Go · Concurrency in Go · Networking
- ⚙️ Internals: Go Runtime Internals · Network Stack Internals §1–3
- 🎯 A3 DAG executor +
orbit-expr(Go) - 🔬 Lab:
schedtrace+ escape analysis; Writing an Interpreter in Go ch. 1–3 - 🧩 Kata: Decorator (Go middleware) + Adapter
- 🧠 Cognitive: predict heap escapes
W4 · 19 – 25 Oct
- 🧩 DSA: linked list, recursion (15) + first weekly contest
- 📖 Core: Database Internals · Python Essentials · Low-Level Design & Machine Coding
- ⚙️ Internals: PostgreSQL Internals §1–3 (MVCC)
- 🎯 A4 Mini Redis (Go) + 2 LLD rounds + isolation anomalies
- ⚫ Boss fight: 1BRC in Java + Go
- 🧩 Kata: State + Command + Template Method
- 🧠 Cognitive: blank-page “type a URL” answer · 🔁 Phase 1 retro
Phase 2: Backend + first AI (W5–W9) → Phase 2 - Backend Engineering · builds Orbit v1 - Core Platform
W5 · 26 Oct – 1 Nov
- 🧩 DSA: trees (18)
- 📖 Core: Spring Core & Boot · Docker (compose)
- ⚙️ Internals: Spring Internals §1–4
- 🎯 A5 orbit-api skeleton → Assignments - Phase 2
- 🔬 Lab (🔴): mini DI container with proxies
- 🧩 Kata: Proxy + Chain of Responsibility
- 🧠 Cognitive: draw
refresh()from memory
W6 · 2 – 8 Nov
- 🧩 DSA: BST, heaps, top-K (15)
- 📖 Core: PostgreSQL · Spring Data & JPA · LLM Fundamentals (intro: API calls, structured output)
- ⚙️ Internals: PostgreSQL Internals §4–7 · Spring Internals §7
- 🎯 A6 data layer + LLM gateway v0 (Go) + UC1 v0 structured classification
- 🔬 Lab: 5M-row EXPLAIN tuning
- 🧩 Kata: Repository + Unit of Work + Specification
- 🧠 Cognitive: predict query plans
W7 · 9 – 15 Nov
- 🧩 DSA: backtracking (15)
- 📖 Core: Spring Security · REST API Design · Security Engineering (AppSec part)
- ⚙️ Internals: Spring Internals §5–6
- 🎯 A7 multi-tenancy: Keycloak, API keys, RLS, idempotency starter
- 🔬 Lab: PortSwigger access control + JWT (≥ 6 labs)
- 🧩 Kata: Composite + Visitor → sealed interfaces
- 🧠 Cognitive: draw PKCE from memory; STRIDE on API keys
W8 · 16 – 22 Nov
- 🧩 DSA: graphs I (15)
- 📖 Core: Go Backend Development · Redis · gRPC & Protobuf · Frontend Essentials (4h)
- ⚙️ Internals: Redis Internals · Network Stack Internals §4–5
- 🎯 A8 tool-calling loop from scratch + gRPC + Lua quotas + UC1 v1
- 🔬 Lab: mini Redis replication/RDB · Wireshark gRPC
- 🧩 Kata: Interpreter + Memento
- 🧠 Cognitive: pre-mortem of the tool loop
W9 · 23 – 29 Nov
- 🧩 DSA: graphs II: topo sort, union-find, Dijkstra (15)
- 📖 Core: GraphQL · Realtime (WebSockets, SSE) · React (4h)
- 🎯 A9 streaming + GraphQL + UI + UC2 v0 → ship Orbit v1
- ⚫ Boss fight: 200 streaming chats + 50 runs/s, fix 2 bottlenecks
- 🧩 Kata: Ports & Adapters + Anti-corruption layer
- 🧠 Cognitive: self-review your W5 ADRs · 🔁 Phase 2 retro + blog post
Phase 3: Distributed Systems (W10–W14) → Phase 3 - Distributed Systems & System Design · builds Orbit v2 - Durable Workflows
W10 · 30 Nov – 6 Dec
- 🧩 DSA: DP I (15)
- 📖 Core: DDIA ch. 5–9 · Distributed Systems · System Design Roadmap · Estimation Cheatsheet
- 🎯 A10 durable execution: event history, leases, fencing → Assignments - Phase 3
- 🔬 Lab: MIT 6.5840 Lab 1 MapReduce
- 🧩 Kata: Lease + Fencing token + Idempotent receiver
- 🧠 Cognitive: first-principles fencing interleaving · 🏛️ Cases: URL shortener, rate limiter
W11 · 7 – 13 Dec
- 🧩 DSA: DP II (15)
- 📖 Core: Kafka · Architecture Patterns
- ⚙️ Internals: Kafka Internals
- 🎯 A11 outbox + Kafka + orbit-hooks (triggers, webhooks, DLQ) + UC9
- 🔬 Lab: Gossip Glomers 1–3
- 🧩 Kata: Outbox + Inbox + Competing consumers
- 🧠 Cognitive: predict ordering under rebalance · 🏛️ Cases: notification system, news feed
W12 · 14 – 20 Dec
- 🧩 DSA: DP III (12)
- 📖 Core: Spring Cloud & Microservices · Microservices Patterns (sagas)
- 🎯 A12 HITL + sagas + versioning + circuit breakers + UC3 refund agent
- 🔬 Lab: MIT 6.5840 Lab 2 · a Temporal sample
- 🧩 Kata: Saga + Compensating transaction + Process manager
- 🧠 Cognitive: pre-mortem of UC3 · 🏛️ Cases: chat system, payment system
W13 · 21 – 27 Dec
- 🧩 DSA: greedy + intervals (15)
- 📖 Core: Raft paper · Search & Other Stores
- 🎯 A13 fair scheduling + admission control + run search (CQRS)
- 🔬 Lab (⚫): MIT 6.5840 Lab 3A–3B Raft
- 🧩 Kata: Leader election + Scheduler-agent-supervisor
- 🧠 Cognitive: Raft teach-back · 🏛️ Cases: distributed cache, KV store, job scheduler
W14 · 28 Dec – 3 Jan
- 🧩 DSA: tries, bits, math + revise
#revise - 🎯 A14 ship Orbit v2
- ⚫ Boss fight: Chaos Day (5,000 runs, 0 lost, 0 duplicates) + post-mortem
- 🔬 Lab: Gossip Glomers 4–5
- 🧩 Kata: CQRS + Materialized view + Event sourcing
- 🧠 Cognitive: constraint flip to 1M runs/s · 🏛️ Mock: “Design a workflow engine” · 🔁 Phase 3 retro
Phase 4: Cloud Native, Ops & Data (W15–W18) → Phase 4 - Cloud Native, Ops & Data · builds Orbit v3 - Cloud Native
W15 · 4 – 10 Jan
- 🧩 DSA: advanced graphs + segment tree/BIT
- 📖 Core: Docker deep · Kubernetes
- ⚙️ Internals: Container Internals · Kubernetes Internals
- 🎯 A15 Helm + KEDA + graceful leases +
OrbitWorkerPooloperator → Assignments - Phase 4 - 🔬 Lab: Kubernetes the Hard Way
- 🧩 Kata: Sidecar + Ambassador + Operator
- 🧠 Cognitive: trace
kubectl apply· 📨 Start applying (Resume & Applications)
W16 · 11 – 17 Jan
- 🧩 DSA: DP IV: bitmask/tree DP (10)
- 📖 Core: Envoy, Gateways & Service Mesh · Cloud (AWS) · Terraform & IaC
- ⚙️ Internals: Envoy Internals
- 🎯 A16 Envoy Gateway + ext_authz (Go) + gVisor code sandbox + Terraform
- 🔬 Lab: containers from scratch in Go
- 🧩 Kata: Gateway offloading + Valet key + Claim check
- 🧠 Cognitive: predict which timeout breaks the stream
W17 · 18 – 24 Jan
- 🧩 DSA: company-tagged mediums (20)
- 📖 Core: CI-CD & GitOps · Observability
- 🎯 A17 OTel (GenAI spans) + SLOs + ArgoCD + canary auto-rollback
- 🔬 Lab (🔴): mini tracer in Go (W3C propagation over HTTP + Kafka)
- 🧩 Kata: Queue-based load leveling + Throttling + Bulkhead
- 🧠 Cognitive: symptom → hypotheses from dashboards only
W18 · 25 – 31 Jan
- 🧩 DSA: mixed revision + 2 contests
- 📖 Core: SRE & Reliability · Security Engineering · Data Pipelines
- 🎯 A18 ingestion pipeline + ClickHouse analytics + threat model
- ⚫ Boss fight: Production Day (cloud, 1-hour soak, 3 failures, < $10)
- 🔬 Lab: windowed stream aggregation (Flink SQL / Kafka Streams)
- 🧩 Kata: Pipes & filters + Deployment stamps/cells
- 🧠 Cognitive: Fermi on infra + LLM cost · 🔁 Phase 4 retro
Phase 5: AI Engineering (W19–W22) → Phase 5 - AI Engineering · builds Orbit v4 - Agents, RAG & MCP
W19 · 1 – 7 Feb
- 🧩 DSA: maintenance (1.5h/day)
- 📖 Core: LLM Fundamentals · Spring AI · AI Engineering (Huyen)
- ⚙️ Internals: LLM Inference Internals
- 🎯 A19 gateway v2 (routing, cascade, prompt + semantic cache, budgets) + UC5 + UC8 → Assignments - Phase 5
- 🔬 Lab (🔴): minbpe; TTFT/prompt-caching measurements
- 🧩 Kata: Prompt chaining + Routing + Model cascade
- 🧠 Cognitive: predict tokens and cost
W20 · 8 – 14 Feb
- 📖 Core: RAG
- 🎯 A20 hybrid RAG + rerank + ACLs + eval set → UC2 full
- 🔬 Lab (🔴): BM25 + HNSW from scratch in Go
- 🧩 Kata: RAG variants + Reranking + Semantic cache
- 🧠 Cognitive: error analysis of 30 failures
W21 · 15 – 21 Feb
- 📖 Core: Agents & Workflows · LangChain & LangGraph · MCP
- 🎯 A21 ReAct agent from scratch (Go) + LangGraph + Orbit MCP server/client + UC4, UC10, UC11
- 🔬 Lab: LangChain Academy LangGraph modules 1–5
- 🧩 Kata: ReAct + Plan-and-execute + Orchestrator–workers + Supervisor
- 🧠 Cognitive: “What did the framework hide?”
W22 · 22 – 28 Feb
- 📖 Core: Evals, Guardrails & LLMOps
- 🎯 A22 evals CI gate + guardrails + UC6 text-to-SQL + UC7 SRE agent + UC12
- ⚫ Boss fight: Red-Team Day (30+ attacks)
- 🧩 Kata: Evaluator–optimizer + Guardrail sandwich + Dual LLM + HITL
- 🧠 Cognitive: transfer classic security → agent security · 🔁 Phase 5 retro
Phase 6: Interview Mode (W23–W26) → Phase 6 - Interview Mode · builds Orbit v5 - Scale & Polish
W23 · 1 – 7 Mar
- 🎯 A23 scale + cost → Assignments - Phase 6
- Mocks: 2 DSA · 2 HLD (incl. “Design an AI workflow platform”) · 1 LLD · behavioral stories final
- ⚙️ Internals revision: 3 notes/day, interview questions only
W24 · 8 – 14 Mar
- 🎯 A24 portfolio + interview transfer
- Company-specific prep (Interview Strategy); revise all
#revise+#interview-q - Final Skill Matrix
W25–W26 · 15 – 28 Mar: Buffer
- Pick 2 from Open Assignments · keep 1 contest + 2 mocks per week while interviewing