System Design Patterns Every Engineer Should Know

Understanding fundamental system design patterns is crucial for building production-ready software. These patterns solve common challenges in distributed systems.

Circuit breaker prevents cascading failures. Bulkhead isolation limits the blast radius of failures. Retry with exponential backoff handles transient errors gracefully. CQRS separates read and write models for optimized performance.

Saga pattern manages distributed transactions across services. Outbox pattern ensures reliable event publishing. These patterns form the building blocks of resilient systems.