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Distributed Systems

Distributed Systems are the architectural backbone of every application you use at scale — from Google Search to Netflix streaming. Understanding how to design, build, and operate systems that run across many machines is what separates mid-level engineers from senior and staff engineers commanding top salaries.

What is Distributed Systems?

Distributed systems engineering covers consistency and consensus (CAP theorem, Paxos, Raft), distributed databases, message queues (Kafka, RabbitMQ), service discovery, fault tolerance, distributed tracing, and eventual consistency patterns. Real-world application includes microservices architecture, distributed caching (Redis Cluster), sharding strategies, and building for horizontal scalability.

Why Distributed Systems matters for your career

As applications grow, monoliths hit limits that only distributed architectures can solve. Companies like Amazon, Meta, and Google have entire engineering disciplines dedicated to distributed systems research. Engineers who deeply understand distributed systems are among the highest-paid in the industry.

Career paths using Distributed Systems

Distributed systems expertise is required for Senior/Staff Software Engineer, Platform Engineer, Site Reliability Engineer (SRE), Infrastructure Engineer, and Engineering Lead roles at scaled tech companies.

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Gurtam

Senior DevOps Engineer

Vilnius, LithuaniaFull-time
PythonBashLinux AdministrationDistributed Systems+7

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Frequently asked questions

What's the CAP theorem and why does it matter?▼

CAP theorem states that a distributed system can only guarantee two of three properties: Consistency, Availability, and Partition tolerance. Understanding this trade-off is fundamental to making correct database and architecture choices.

How do I learn distributed systems?▼

Read 'Designing Data-Intensive Applications' by Martin Kleppmann, study systems like Kafka, Cassandra, and ZooKeeper in depth, and practise designing systems at scale in mock interviews.

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