System Design Master Template (designing Instagram) with Arslan Ahmad

Опубликовано: 01 Июнь 2026
на канале: The Geek Narrator
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Hi Everyone,

In this episode I am joined by Arslan Ahmad, Author of the 'Grokking' series, CEO & Co-Founder of DesignGurus.org. We have talked about a System Design Master template that Arslan created to approach system design problems in a systematic way. To explain the master template we have discussed a practical example of an Instagram like application.

We discussed two critical workflows of the app:
1) Posting photo and video
2) News feed generation

Chapters:
00:00 Introduction
02:30 System Design Master Template Overview
12:00 Designing Instagram (Post photos/videos)
38:00 File System vs Object Store
46:45 Fetching a Post and News Feed Design
01:20:00 NoSQL vs SQL database choice
01:30:00 Wrapping up

About Arslan:
Author of ‘Grokking’ series | CEO & Co-founder of DesignGurus.org | Ex-Meta, Microsoft, Hulu

20 years of professional experience in system analysis, architecture, design, development, and maintenance, working as a Team Lead and Software Developer. Successfully drove several development cycles of multiple products.

Specialties:
• Distributed Systems Architecture
• Distributed Storage Systems
• Web Portals
• Service Management Infrastructure
• Scalable System Design
• Algorithm Design and Implementation
• Software Watchdogs and Monitoring

Contact info:
Arslan’s Profile : linkedin.com/in/arslanahmad
Websites: designgurus.org
Medium blog: arslan-ahmad.medium.com
Email: [email protected]

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Cheers,
The GeekNarrator