System Architecture

At Level 1, you're not yet responsible for system design, but you're starting to understand how the parts fit together. Your focus is on building features within an existing architecture and following established patterns. You're learning to read diagrams, understand service boundaries, and follow conventions that others have set. You may not yet make architectural decisions, but you're becoming aware of them—and that's the first step.

Key Behaviors

  • Builds features within the boundaries of existing systems
  • Follows architectural guidance and codebase conventions
  • Asks questions about how systems are structured
  • Starts to understand the purpose of components like APIs, databases, and services
  • Learns from code reviews that touch architectural concerns

Common Struggles

  • May not recognize when they're introducing architectural risk
  • Focuses only on local code, not system-wide behavior
  • Struggles to reason about how their changes affect other parts of the system

Success Indicators

You know you're successful when you:

  • Understand the basic architecture of the systems you work on
  • Respect system boundaries and follow established patterns
  • Ask thoughtful questions about design decisions
  • Build with awareness of how your work fits into the bigger picture

Mindset Shift

From:

"I build my part."

To:

"I understand how my part fits into the system."

Questions to Ask Yourself

  • How do requests flow through this system?
  • What assumptions does this component make about others?
  • What breaks if this service fails?

Build These Habits

  • 1
    Read architecture docs and ask questions about them
  • 2
    Trace how a request moves through the system from end to end
  • 3
    Pay attention to how other teams structure and integrate their work

Seek Feedback

  • "Does this approach follow the architecture we've defined?"
  • "Could this change have unintended effects on other parts of the system?"
  • "What tradeoffs were considered in choosing this design?"

Signals You're Ready to Level Up

  • You understand the high-level architecture of the systems you touch
  • You spot when something doesn't fit the design patterns in use
  • You talk about your work in terms of system impact

Focus Summary

  • Zoom out
  • Ask why
  • Learn how systems are shaped

At Level 1, you're developing architectural literacy. You build inside existing structures, ask smart questions, and start to see how everything connects.