Build real systems
Theory is easy. Employers want builders. Each project walks you through requirements → design → implementation → scaling - exactly how it works at a real company.
What's inside every project
Requirements
Real functional + non-functional specs - just like a product team hands to engineers.
API Design
Contract-first REST API definitions with endpoints, request & response schemas.
DB Schema
Normalized schemas with justifications for every design decision made.
Scaling Plan
How to evolve from 100 to 10M users - sharding, caching, CDN, and beyond.
Hands-on learning
Pick a project and start building
AI SaaS — RAG-Based Study Assistant
Build a production-ready AI SaaS product: a document Q&A assistant where users upload PDFs and chat with them. Full-stack: FastAPI backend + Next.js frontend + pgvector + OpenAI. Deployable, monetizable, portfolio-worthy.
Analyst Case Study
Carry one messy dataset the whole way: clean it, explore it, form a hypothesis, test it, and present a recommendation someone could act on. The capstone for the Data Analyst track, and the portfolio piece to link from your CV.
Blog REST API
Build a full-featured blogging backend: JWT authentication, posts, comments, tags, and role-based access. Learn REST API design best practices, pagination, and security patterns.
Distributed Rate Limiter
Design and implement a production-grade API rate limiter using token bucket and sliding window algorithms. Deploy it as a middleware service backed by Redis with atomic Lua scripts.
E-commerce Backend
Build a scalable e-commerce API with product catalog, cart, order management, and payment integration. Covers idempotency, optimistic locking, inventory management, and event-driven order processing.
End-to-End Data Pipeline
Build a complete, production-grade data pipeline: Airbyte ingestion → Delta Lake → dbt transformation → Metabase dashboard. Orchestrated with Airflow. The capstone for the Data Engineer track.
End-to-End Data Science Case Study
Carry one messy dataset the whole way: clean it, explore it, build features, model it, evaluate honestly, and defend a recommendation. The capstone for the Data Scientist track — and the portfolio piece reviewers actually read.
Real-Time Streaming Pipeline
Build a production-grade real-time data pipeline: Kafka → Spark Structured Streaming → Delta Lake → BI dashboard. Process 1M+ events/day with sub-minute latency.
URL Shortener
Build a production-grade URL shortener with custom aliases, click analytics, and expiry. Learn hashing strategies, Redis caching, and horizontal scaling with consistent hashing.