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Become a Solutions Architect
Design distributed, cloud-native systems at scale and lead technical decision-making across the organization.
CREATED BY
K
Kiran N. [PLACEHOLDER] ★ 5.0
Site Reliability Engineer at NetSwitch | 5+ years of experience
About this Path
Built for senior engineers and tech leads with 6+ years of experience who want to move into Solutions Architect or Principal Engineer roles. You will master distributed systems design, multi-cloud architecture patterns, security at the perimeter and data layer, architecture governance, and the communication skills needed to influence C-suite technical decisions.
Path Overview
Advanced LevelCertificate of CompletionAbout 72 hours to completeEnglish language22+ curated videosLearn online at your own pace6 modules with resourcesGamified & interactive
Path Curriculum
CAP Theorem, Consistency Models, and Trade-offs
Choose between strong and eventual consistency based on workload SLA requirements.
Event-Driven Architecture with Kafka and SNS/SQS
Design loosely coupled services using event streams, dead-letter queues, and idempotency.
CQRS, Event Sourcing, and Saga Patterns
Separate read and write models and coordinate distributed transactions without two-phase commit.
Service Mesh, API Gateway, and BFF Pattern
Route, observe, and secure service-to-service traffic using Istio or AWS API Gateway.
Well-Architected Framework: Five Pillars Deep Dive
Apply reliability, security, cost optimization, and operational excellence to real designs.
Multi-Region Active-Active Design
Architect global failover using Route 53, Global Accelerator, and cross-region replication.
Serverless and Container Architectures
Choose between Lambda, ECS Fargate, and EKS based on cold-start, state, and cost constraints.
Infrastructure as Code with Terraform and CDK
Build modular, environment-agnostic IaC that passes security and drift detection gates.
Choosing Databases: OLTP, OLAP, NoSQL, and NewSQL
Match PostgreSQL, DynamoDB, Cassandra, and BigQuery to access patterns and scale requirements.
Data Lake and Lakehouse Architecture
Design medallion-layer pipelines on S3 or ADLS with Delta Lake for analytics workloads.
Caching Strategies: Redis, CDN, and Read-Through
Reduce p99 latency by layering cache-aside, write-through, and CDN edge caching correctly.
Zero Trust Network Architecture
Eliminate implicit trust with identity-aware proxies, micro-segmentation, and mTLS.
Threat Modeling with STRIDE and PASTA
Systematically identify attack surfaces and document mitigations in architecture reviews.
Data Encryption at Rest and in Transit
Implement KMS key hierarchies, TLS termination strategies, and field-level encryption.
Compliance Frameworks: SOC 2, GDPR, ISO 27001
Map technical controls to compliance requirements to accelerate audit readiness.
Designing for Observability: Metrics, Logs, Traces
Instrument services with OpenTelemetry and build dashboards that catch issues before users do.
SLIs, SLOs, and Error Budget Management
Define service-level objectives that balance reliability investment with feature velocity.
Chaos Engineering and Fault Injection
Run controlled failure experiments with AWS Fault Injection Simulator or Gremlin.
Architecture Decision Records (ADRs)
Document context, options, and consequences to make architecture decisions auditable.
Running Architecture Review Boards
Facilitate ARB sessions with structured templates, fitness functions, and veto criteria.
Technical Storytelling for C-Suite Audiences
Translate complex architecture trade-offs into business risk and cost language for executives.
Solution Sizing and TCO Estimation
Produce credible total-cost-of-ownership models to justify build vs buy vs migrate decisions.
What you'll learn
- ✓Design distributed systems using event-driven, CQRS, and saga patterns for high availability.
- ✓Architect multi-region AWS or Azure solutions with IaC using Terraform and CDK.
- ✓Apply Zero Trust security principles and design defense-in-depth for cloud workloads.
- ✓Drive architecture review boards using ADRs, threat models, and fitness functions.
- ✓Evaluate and select databases, message brokers, and caching layers for specific workload profiles.
- ✓Present architecture proposals to CTOs and non-technical stakeholders with structured trade-off narratives.