Senior Engineer/Interview Roadmap

$ master_the_stack

A structured 12-week roadmap covering Java internals, DSA patterns, and system design for senior engineering interviews. Track your progress as you go.

Progress0%

☕ Java

0/48 0%

🧩 DSA

0/34 0%

🏗️ System Design

0/40 0%

📅 Weeks

0/12 0%

Must-know topic

·EasyMediumHard

Fundamentals

0/8

OOP Principles (SOLID)

Easyoopsoliddesign

Collections Framework

Mediumcollectionslistmap

Exception Handling

Easyexceptionstry-catch

Generics & Type System

Mediumgenericstypeswildcards

String Manipulation

Easystringstringbuilder

Java Memory Model

Hardmemoryheapstack

Serialization

Mediumserializationio

Reflection API

Hardreflectionmetadataannotations

Java 8+

0/10

Lambda Expressions

Easylambdafunctionaljava8

Stream API

Mediumstreamsfunctionalpipeline

Optional

Easyoptionalnull-safety

Functional Interfaces

Mediumfunctionalpredicatefunction

Default & Static Methods in Interfaces

Mediuminterfacesdefault-methods

Date/Time API

Easydatetimelocaldatetime

CompletableFuture

Hardasyncfutureconcurrency

Records (Java 14+)

Easyrecordsimmutablejava14

Sealed Classes (Java 17)

Mediumsealedpattern-matchingjava17

Text Blocks (Java 13+)

Easytext-blocksstringjava13

JVM Internals

0/5

ClassLoader Hierarchy

Hardclassloaderjvmbootstrap

Garbage Collection Algorithms

Hardgcg1cms

JIT Compilation

Hardjitbytecodeoptimization

Memory Areas (Heap, Stack, Metaspace)

Hardheapstackmetaspace

Bytecode & javap

Mediumbytecodejavapdecompile

Concurrency

0/7

Thread Lifecycle & States

Mediumthreadslifecyclestates

synchronized & volatile

Mediumsynchronizedvolatilevisibility

java.util.concurrent package

Hardconcurrentexecutorlocks

Atomic Variables & CAS

Hardatomiccaslock-free

ThreadLocal

Mediumthreadlocalisolation

Deadlock, Livelock, Starvation

Harddeadlocklivelockstarvation

Fork/Join Framework

Hardfork-joinparallelrecursive

Design Patterns

0/6

Singleton (thread-safe variants)

Mediumsingletoncreational

Factory & Abstract Factory

Mediumfactorycreational

Builder Pattern

Easybuildercreationalfluent

Observer Pattern

Mediumobserverbehavioralevents

Strategy & Template Method

Mediumstrategytemplatebehavioral

Decorator & Proxy

Harddecoratorproxystructural

Advanced

0/12

Spring Core & DI

Mediumspringdiioc

Spring Boot Auto-Configuration

Mediumspring-bootauto-config

Spring Data JPA

Mediumjpahibernateorm

REST API Design & Spring MVC

Mediumrestspring-mvcapi

Transaction Management

Hardtransactionsacidspring-tx

Microservices Architecture

Hardmicroservicesarchitecture

Reactive Programming (Project Reactor)

Hardreactivefluxmono

Messaging (Kafka / RabbitMQ)

Hardkafkamessagingevents

Testing (JUnit 5, Mockito, TestContainers)

Mediumtestingjunitmockito

Docker & Containerization

Mediumdockercontainersdevops

CI/CD Pipelines

Mediumcicdgithub-actionsdevops

Profiling & Performance Tuning

Hardprofilingperformancejvm