Books¶

Chosen for a 15-year engineer: read the chapters listed, skim the rest. Editions checked as of September 2026. Priority: P0 read during the 24 weeks · P1 read selectively when the topic comes up · P2 reference / optional.

How to read technical books at this level

Read the chapter summary and diagrams first, then only sections that contradict or extend what you already believe. Write one ADR-style note per chapter: "This changes how I would design X because…". If nothing changes, move on.

System design & distributed systems¶

Book	Author(s)	Edition / year	Track	Priority	Chapters to read (15-yr engineer)	Cost
Designing Data-Intensive Applications	Martin Kleppmann & Chris Riccomini	2^nd ed., 2026	system-design	P0	All of Part II (replication, sharding, transactions, "trouble with distributed systems", consistency & consensus) and the new cloud/data-systems material. Skim storage-engine chapters if you already know LSM vs B-tree.	Paid
Understanding Distributed Systems	Roberto Vitillo	2^nd ed., 2022	system-design	P1	Part II (coordination: clocks, leader election, replication), Part IV (resiliency: timeouts, retries, circuit breakers, load shedding), Part V (monitoring). A fast refresher before DDIA.	Paid
Database Internals	Alex Petrov	1^st ed., 2019	system-design	P1	Part II only (failure detection, leader election, replication & consistency, anti-entropy, distributed transactions, consensus).	Paid
System Design Interview Vol. 1 & 2	Alex Xu (+ Sahn Lam, Vol. 2)	2020 / 2022	system-design	P1	Vol. 1 ch. 1–4 (framework, estimation) for interview structure; Vol. 2 ch. on proximity service, message queue, payment system, S3-like storage. Use as interview-format drills, not for depth.	Paid
Site Reliability Engineering	Google (Beyer et al.)	2016 (free online)	system-design	P1	Ch. 3 (embracing risk), 4 (SLOs), 6 (monitoring), 21–22 (handling overload, cascading failures). The SRE Workbook's SLO chapters too.	Free
Release It!	Michael T. Nygard	2^nd ed., 2018	system-design	P2	Part I (stability anti-patterns & patterns: bulkheads, circuit breakers, steady state). The rest is dated.	Paid

AI engineering & AI system design¶

Book	Author(s)	Edition / year	Track	Priority	Chapters to read	Cost
AI Engineering	Chip Huyen	1^st ed., 2025 (O'Reilly)	ai-system-design	P0	Ch. 3–4 (evaluation methodology and evaluating AI systems), 6 (RAG and agents), 8 (dataset engineering, skim), 9 (inference optimisation), 10 (architecture & user feedback). Skip ch. 1–2 intro unless you want the history.	Paid (repo free)
Designing Machine Learning Systems	Chip Huyen	1^st ed., 2022	ai-system-design	P2	Ch. 7–9 (deployment, data distribution shifts, continual learning) — relevant when agents sit next to classic ML.	Paid
Generative AI System Design Interview	Ali Aminian & Hao Sheng	2024	ai-system-design	P1	RAG chatbot, text-to-image, personalised headshots chapters for interview framing. Light on agents/evals (2026 reviews) — supplement with articles.	Paid
Machine Learning System Design Interview	Ali Aminian & Alex Xu	2023	ai-system-design	P2	Ch. 1 (framework) + search/recommendation chapters — useful because retrieval/ranking underlies RAG.	Paid
LLM Engineer's Handbook	Paul Iusztin & Maxime Labonne	1^st ed., 2024 (Packt)	agentic-ai	P1	Feature/training/inference pipeline chapters and the RAG + LLMOps chapters; follow the repo code rather than reading linearly.	Paid (code free)
Hands-On Large Language Models	Jay Alammar & Maarten Grootendorst	1^st ed., 2024	agentic-ai	P1	Tokens/embeddings and transformer-internals chapters (for the visuals), semantic search & RAG, fine-tuning embedding models.	Paid
Build a Large Language Model (From Scratch)	Sebastian Raschka	1^st ed., 2024	agentic-ai	P2	Ch. 3 (attention) and ch. 7 (instruction fine-tuning) — do them as Phase 5 depth labs; the rest if curious.	Paid
The RLHF Book	Nathan Lambert	Online, continuously updated	agentic-ai	P2	Reward modelling, DPO/direct alignment and RL-from-verifiable-rewards chapters before any GRPO/DPO lab.	Free

Architecture¶

Book	Author(s)	Edition / year	Track	Priority	Chapters to read	Cost
Fundamentals of Software Architecture	Mark Richards & Neal Ford	2^nd ed., 2025	architecture	P0	Architecture characteristics, architecture quantum, logical components, the styles chapters you don't use daily (space-based, event-driven, microkernel), and the new GenAI/architecture chapters. Skip "what is an architect".	Paid
Software Architecture: The Hard Parts	Ford, Richards, Sadalage, Dehghani	2021	architecture	P0	Ch. 7–8 (service granularity, reuse), 9–10 (data ownership, distributed data access), 11–12 (orchestration vs choreography, transactional sagas), 13 (contracts). The saga matrix is interview gold.	Paid
Learning Domain-Driven Design	Vlad Khononov	2021	architecture	P1	Part I (strategic design: subdomains, bounded contexts, context mapping) and ch. on architectural patterns/heuristics. Skip tactical basics if you know aggregates.	Paid
Balancing Coupling in Software Design	Vlad Khononov	2024	architecture	P1	The whole model is short: integration strength × distance × volatility. Gives you precise language for "this is too coupled".	Paid
Architecture Modernization	Nick Tune (with Jean-Georges Perrin)	2024	architecture	P1	Chapters on modernization strategy, Wardley mapping, EventStorming and org/team alignment — directly usable for L4 migration questions.	Paid
Building Event-Driven Microservices	Adam Bellemare	2^nd ed., 2025	architecture	P1	Event design, data contracts, and the chapters on integrating with legacy/request-response systems.	Paid
Team Topologies	Matthew Skelton & Manuel Pais	2019 (check site for newer edition)	staff-skills	P1	Ch. 4–7 (the four team types, three interaction modes, Conway's law applied).	Paid
A Philosophy of Software Design	John Ousterhout	2^nd ed., 2021	architecture	P2	Ch. 2–6 (complexity, deep modules, information hiding). A 2-evening read that sharpens API/tool design for agents.	Paid

Staff+ & career¶

Book	Author(s)	Edition / year	Track	Priority	Chapters to read	Cost
The Staff Engineer's Path	Tanya Reilly	2022	staff-skills	P0	Part I (big picture: maps, strategy), Part II ch. on finite time and leading big projects, Part III (levelling up others).	Paid
Staff Engineer: Leadership Beyond the Management Track	Will Larson	2021	staff-skills	P0	Part I (archetypes, operating at Staff, getting the title). Part II interviews: pick 3 whose role matches yours.	Paid (much free on site)
Crafting Engineering Strategy	Will Larson	2025 (O'Reilly)	staff-skills	P1	The strategy-writing process and 2–3 case studies; aim to write one strategy doc for your capstone.	Paid (drafts free on blog)
The Software Engineer's Guidebook	Gergely Orosz	2023	staff-skills	P1	Parts on Staff/Principal engineer and "engineering at scale"; skip early-career parts.	Paid

Python, Java & DSA¶

Book	Author(s)	Edition / year	Track	Priority	Chapters to read	Cost
Fluent Python	Luciano Ramalho	2^nd ed., 2022	python	P0	Ch. 5 (data class builders), 8 & 15 (type hints, advanced typing, protocols), 17 (iterators/generators), 19–21 (concurrency, executors, asyncio), 23–24 (descriptors, metaprogramming) for the "how Pydantic works" level.	Paid
Architecture Patterns with Python (Cosmic Python)	Harry Percival & Bob Gregory	2020 (free online)	python	P1	Repository, unit of work, service layer, events & message bus chapters — the patterns behind a clean FastAPI + agent backend.	Free
Python Concurrency with asyncio	Matthew Fowler	2022	python	P1	Event-loop internals, concurrent web requests, asyncio + multiprocessing, synchronisation and queues chapters.	Paid
Effective Java	Joshua Bloch	3^rd ed., 2018	java	P2	Items on generics, enums/annotations, lambdas/streams, concurrency. Pair with JDK 25 JEPs for what's changed.	Paid
Java Concurrency in Practice	Brian Goetz et al.	2006	java	P2	Ch. 2–5 and 16 (memory model) — still the foundation under virtual threads and structured concurrency.	Paid
Spring AI in Action	Craig Walls	2025	java	P1	RAG, tool calling and MCP chapters; cross-check APIs against Spring AI 2.0 docs (the book predates 2.0 GA).	Paid
Coding Interview Patterns	Alex Xu & Shaun Gunawardane	2024	dsa	P1	Pattern chapters matching your NeetCode weaknesses (graphs, DP, intervals, heaps).	Paid
Algorithms	Jeff Erickson	2019 (free)	dsa	P2	Recursion/backtracking, dynamic programming and graph chapters when a pattern "doesn't click".	Free