Careers in Tech

The system design interview is one of the hardest challenges you’ll face in the software engineering hiring process. This practical book gives you the insights, the skills, and the hands-on practice you need to ace the toughest system design interview questions and land the job and salary you want.

In Acing the System Design Interview you will master a structured and organized approach to present system design ideas like:

• Scaling applications to support heavy traffic
• Distributed transactions techniques to ensure data consistency
• Services for functional partitioning such as API gateway and service mesh
• Common API paradigms including REST, RPC, and GraphQL
• Caching strategies, including their tradeoffs
• Logging, monitoring, and alerting concepts that are critical in any system design
• Communication skills that demonstrate your engineering maturity

Don’t be daunted by the complex, open-ended nature of system design interviews! In this in-depth guide, author Zhiyong Tan shares what he’s learned on both sides of the interview table. You’ll dive deep into the common technical topics that arise during interviews and learn how to apply them to mentally perfect different kinds of systems.

You are going to need more than technical knowledge to succeed as a data scientist.

Build a Career in Data Science teaches you what school leaves out, from how to land your first job to the lifecycle of a data science project, and even how to become a manager.

Complex problem solving is at the very top of the list of essential skills for career progression in the modern world. But how problem solving is taught in our schools, universities, businesses and organizations comes up short. In Bulletproof Problem Solving: The One Skill That Changes Everything you’ll learn the seven-step systematic approach to creative problem solving developed in top consulting firms that will work in any field or industry, turning you into a highly sought-after bulletproof problem solver who can tackle challenges that others balk at.

The problem-solving technique outlined in this book is based on a highly visual, logic-tree method that can be applied to everything from everyday decisions to strategic issues in business to global social challenges. The authors, with decades of experience at McKinsey and Company, provide 30 detailed, real-world examples, so you can see exactly how the technique works in action. With this bulletproof approach to defining, unpacking, understanding, and ultimately solving problems, you’ll have a personal superpower for developing compelling solutions in your workplace.

• Discover the time-tested 7-step technique to problem solving that top consulting professionals employ
• Learn how a simple visual system can help you break down and understand the component parts of even the most complex problems
• Build team brainstorming techniques that fight cognitive bias, streamline workplanning, and speed solutions
• Know when and how to employ modern analytic tools and techniques from machine learning to game theory
• Learn how to structure and communicate your findings to convince audiences and compel action

The secrets revealed in Bulletproof Problem Solving will transform the way you approach problems and take you to the next level of business and personal success.

I am not a recruiter. I am a software engineer. And as such, I know what it's like to be asked to whip up brilliant algorithms on the spot and then write flawless code on a whiteboard. I've been through this—as a candidate and as an interviewer.

Cracking the Coding Interview, 6th Edition is here to help you through this process, teaching you what you need to know and enabling you to perform at your very best. I've coached and interviewed hundreds of software engineers. The result is this book.

Learn how to uncover the hints and hidden details in a question, discover how to break down a problem into manageable chunks, develop techniques to unstick yourself when stuck, learn (or re-learn) core computer science concepts, and practice on 189 interview questions and solutions.

These interview questions are real; they are not pulled out of computer science textbooks. They reflect what’s truly being asked at the top companies, so that you can be as prepared as possible.

WHAT'S INSIDE?

• 189 programming interview questions, ranging from the basics to the trickiest algorithm problems.
• A walk-through of how to derive each solution, so that you can learn how to get there yourself.
• Hints on how to solve each of the 189 questions, just like what you would get in a real interview.
• Five proven strategies to tackle algorithm questions, so that you can solve questions you haven’t seen.
• Extensive coverage of essential topics, such as big O time, data structures, and core algorithms.
• A “behind the scenes” look at how top companies, like Google and Facebook, hire developers.
• Techniques to prepare for and ace the “soft” side of the interview: behavioral questions.
• For interviewers and companies: details on what makes a good interview question and hiring process.

Preparing for a data engineering interview can often get overwhelming due to the abundance of tools and technologies, leaving you struggling to prioritize which ones to focus on. This hands-on guide provides you with the essential foundational and advanced knowledge needed to simplify your learning journey.

The book begins by helping you gain a clear understanding of the nature of data engineering and how it differs from organization to organization. As you progress through the chapters, you’ll receive expert advice, practical tips, and real-world insights on everything from creating a resume and cover letter to networking and negotiating your salary. The chapters also offer refresher training on data engineering essentials, including data modeling, database architecture, ETL processes, data warehousing, cloud computing, big data, and machine learning. As you advance, you’ll gain a holistic view by exploring continuous integration/continuous development (CI/CD), data security, and privacy. Finally, the book will help you practice case studies, mock interviews, as well as behavioral questions.

By the end of this book, you will have a clear understanding of what is required to succeed in an interview for a data engineering role.

What you will learn

• Create maintainable and scalable code for unit testing
• Understand the fundamental concepts of core data engineering tasks
• Prepare with over 100 behavioral and technical interview questions
• Discover data engineer archetypes and how they can help you prepare for the interview
• Apply the essential concepts of Python and SQL in data engineering
• Build your personal brand to noticeably stand out as a candidate

Who this book is for

If you’re an aspiring data engineer looking for guidance on how to land, prepare for, and excel in data engineering interviews, this book is for you. Familiarity with the fundamentals of data engineering, such as data modeling, cloud warehouses, programming (python and SQL), building data pipelines, scheduling your workflows (Airflow), and APIs, is a prerequisite.

Kickstart a career in cybersecurity by adapting your existing technical and non-technical skills. Author Alyssa Miller has spent fifteen years in cybersecurity leadership and talent development, and shares her unique perspective in this revealing industry guide.

In Cybersecurity Career Guide you will learn:

• Self-analysis exercises to find your unique capabilities and help you excel in cybersecurity
• How to adapt your existing skills to fit a cybersecurity role
• Succeed at job searches, applications, and interviews to receive valuable offers
• Ways to leverage professional networking and mentoring for success and career growth
• Building a personal brand and strategy to stand out from other applicants
• Overcoming imposter syndrome and other personal roadblocks

Cybersecurity Career Guide unlocks your pathway to becoming a great security practitioner. You’ll learn how to reliably enter the security field and quickly grow into your new career, following clear, practical advice that’s based on research and interviews with hundreds of hiring managers. Practical self-analysis exercises identify gaps in your resume, what makes you valuable to an employer, and what you want out of your career in cyber. You’ll assess the benefits of all major professional qualifications, and get practical advice on relationship building with mentors.

As tech products become more prevalent today, the demand for machine learning professionals continues to grow. But the responsibilities and skill sets required of ML professionals still vary drastically from company to company, making the interview process difficult to predict. In this guide, data science leader Susan Shu Chang shows you how to tackle the ML hiring process.

Having served as principal data scientist in several companies, Chang has considerable experience as both ML interviewer and interviewee. She'll take you through the highly selective recruitment process by sharing hard-won lessons she learned along the way. You'll quickly understand how to successfully navigate your way through typical ML interviews.

This guide shows you how to:

• Explore various machine learning roles, including ML engineer, applied scientist, data scientist, and other positions
• Assess your interests and skills before deciding which ML role(s) to pursue
• Evaluate your current skills and close any gaps that may prevent you from succeeding in the interview process
• Acquire the skill set necessary for each machine learning role
• Ace ML interview topics, including coding assessments, statistics and machine learning theory, and behavioral questions
• Prepare for interviews in statistics and machine learning theory by studying common interview questions

To score a job in data science, machine learning, computer graphics, and cryptography, you need to bring strong math skills to the party.

Math for Programmers teaches the math you need for these hot careers, concentrating on what you need to know as a developer. Filled with lots of helpful graphics and more than 200 exercises and mini-projects, this book unlocks the door to interesting–and lucrative!–careers in some of today’s hottest programming fields.

Becoming a network architect is challenging—it demands hands-on engineering skills, encompassing hardware installation, configuration, and fabric layout design. Equally crucial, it involves collaboration with internal teams and C-Suite stakeholders, and adeptly managing external entities like vendors and service providers. The Network Architect's Handbook comprehensively covers these vital aspects, guiding you to evolve into an effective network architect within an organization, fostering seamless communication with leadership teams and other stakeholders.

Starting with a clear definition of a network architect’s role, this book lays out a roadmap and delves into the attributes and mindset for success. You’ll then explore network architect design, physical infrastructure routing and switching, and network services such as DNS, MLAG, and service insertion. As you progress, you’ll gain insights into the necessary skills and typical daily challenges faced by network architects. And to thoroughly prepare you to advance in your career, this handbook covers certifications and associated training for maintaining relevance in an organization, along with common interview questions for a network architect's position.

Armed with essential concepts, techniques, and your newfound skills, you’ll be well-prepared to pursue a career as a network architect.

What you will learn

• Examine the role of a network architect
• Understand the key design makers in an organization
• Choose the best strategies to meet stakeholder needs
• Be well-versed with networking concepts
• Prepare for a network architect position interview
• Distinguish the different IT architects in an organization
• Identify relevant certification for network architects
• Understand the various de facto network/fabric architect models used today

Who this book is for

This book is for network engineers and technicians aspiring to transition into the role of a network architect. Whether you are at the beginning of your journey or seeking guidance along the path, this book will support you with its deep coverage of key aspects such as design concepts, architectural requirements, relevant experience, certifications, and advanced education with a special emphasis on cloud best practices. A practical understanding of IT networking is necessary to get the most out of this book.

The Google Cloud Certified Professional Data Engineer Study Guide, provides everything you need to prepare for this important exam and master the skills necessary to land that coveted Google Cloud Professional Data Engineer certification. Beginning with a pre-book assessment quiz to evaluate what you know before you begin, each chapter features exam objectives and review questions, plus the online learning environment includes additional complete practice tests.

Written by Dan Sullivan, a popular and experienced online course author for machine learning, big data, and Cloud topics, Google Cloud Certified Professional Data Engineer Study Guide is your ace in the hole for deploying and managing analytics and machine learning applications.

• Build and operationalize storage systems, pipelines, and compute infrastructure
• Understand machine learning models and learn how to select pre-built models
• Monitor and troubleshoot machine learning models
• Design analytics and machine learning applications that are secure, scalable, and highly available.

This exam guide is designed to help you develop an in depth understanding of data engineering and machine learning on Google Cloud Platform.

Own Your Tech Career: Soft skills for technologists is a guide to taking control of your professional life. It teaches you to approach your career with planning and purpose, always making active decisions towards your goals.

In Own Your Tech Career: Soft skills for technologists, you will:

• Define what “success” means for your career
• Discover personal branding and career maintenance
• Prepare for and conduct a tech job hunt
• Spot speed bumps and barriers that can derail your progress
• Learn how to navigate the rules of the business world
• Perform market analysis to keep your tech skills fresh and relevant

Whatever your road to success, you’ll benefit from the toolbox of career-boosting techniques you’ll find in

Own Your Tech Career: Soft skills for technologists. You’ll discover in-demand communication and teamwork skills, essential rules for professionalism, tactics of the modern job hunt, and more.

Skills to grow from a solo coder into a productive member of a software development team, with seasoned advice on everything from refactoring to acing an interview.

In Skills of a Successful Software Engineer you will learn:

• The skills you need to succeed on a software development team
• Best practices for writing maintainable code
• Testing and commenting code for others to read and use
• Refactoring code you didn’t write
• What to expect from a technical interview process
• How to be a tech leader
• Getting around gatekeeping in the tech community

Skills of a Successful Software Engineer is a best practices guide for succeeding on a software development team. The book reveals how to optimize both your code and your career, from achieving a good work-life balance to writing the kind of bug-free code delivered by pros. You’ll master essential skills that you might not have learned as a solo coder, including meaningful code commenting, unit testing, and using refactoring to speed up feature delivery. Timeless advice on acing interviews and setting yourself up for leadership will help you throughout your career. Crack open this one-of-a-kind guide, and you’ll soon be working in the professional manner that software managers expect.

Becoming a solutions architect requires a hands-on approach, and this edition of the Solutions Architect's Handbook brings exactly that. This handbook will teach you how to create robust, scalable, and fault-tolerant solutions and next-generation architecture designs in a cloud environment. It will also help you build effective product strategies for your business and implement them from start to finish.

This new edition features additional chapters on disruptive technologies, such as Internet of Things (IoT), quantum computing, data engineering, and machine learning. It also includes updated discussions on cloud-native architecture, blockchain data storage, and mainframe modernization with public cloud.

The Solutions Architect's Handbook provides an understanding of solution architecture and how it fits into an agile enterprise environment. It will take you through the journey of solution architecture design by providing detailed knowledge of design pillars, advanced design patterns, anti-patterns, and the cloud-native aspects of modern software design.

By the end of this handbook, you'll have learned the techniques needed to create efficient architecture designs that meet your business requirements.

What you will learn

• Explore the various roles of a solutions architect in the enterprise landscape
• Implement key design principles and patterns to build high-performance cost-effective solutions
• Choose the best strategies to secure your architectures and increase their availability
• Modernize legacy applications with the help of cloud integration
• Understand how big data processing, machine learning, and IoT fit into modern architecture
• Integrate a DevOps mindset to promote collaboration, increase operational efficiency, and streamline production

Who this book is for

This book is for software developers, system engineers, DevOps engineers, architects, and team leaders who already work in the IT industry and aspire to become solutions architect professionals. Existing solutions architects who want to expand their skillset or get a better understanding of new technologies will also learn valuable new skills. To get started, you'll need a good understanding of the real-world software development process and general programming experience in any language.

Java is one of the most sought-after programming languages in the job market, but cracking the coding interview in this challenging economy might not be easy. This comprehensive guide will help you to tackle various challenges faced in a coding job interview and avoid common interview mistakes, and will ultimately guide you toward landing your job as a Java developer.

This book contains two crucial elements of coding interviews - a brief section that will take you through non-technical interview questions, while the more comprehensive part covers over 200 coding interview problems along with their hands-on solutions. This book will help you to develop skills in data structures and algorithms, which technical interviewers look for in a candidate, by solving various problems based on these topics covering a wide range of concepts such as arrays, strings, maps, linked lists, sorting, and searching. You'll find out how to approach a coding interview problem in a structured way that produces faster results. Toward the final chapters, you'll learn to solve tricky questions about concurrency, functional programming, and system scalability.

By the end of this book, you'll have learned how to solve Java coding problems commonly used in interviews, and will have developed the confidence to secure your Java-centric dream job.

What you will learn

• Solve the most popular Java coding problems efficiently
• Tackle challenging algorithms that will help you develop robust and fast logic
• Practice answering commonly asked non-technical interview questions that can make the difference between a pass and a fail
• Get an overall picture of prospective employers' expectations from a Java developer
• Solve various concurrent programming, functional programming, and unit testing problems

Who this book is for

This book is for students, programmers, and employees who want to be invited to and pass interviews given by top companies. The book assumes high school mathematics and basic programming knowledge.

As an engineering manager, you almost always have someone in your company to turn to for advice: a peer on another team, your manager, or even the head of engineering. But who do you turn to if you're the head of engineering? Engineering executives have a challenging learning curve, and many folks excitedly start their first executive role only to leave frustrated within the first 18 months.

In this book, author Will Larson shows you ways to obtain your first executive job and quickly ramp up to meet the challenges you may not have encountered in non-executive roles: measuring engineering for both engineers and the CEO, company-scoped headcount planning, communicating successfully across a growing organization, and figuring out what people actually mean when they keep asking for a "technology strategy."

This book explains how to:

• Get an engineering executive job, negotiate the contract, and onboard at your new company
• Run an engineering planning process and communicate effectively with the organization
• Direct the core meetings necessary to operate an effective engineering organization
• Hire, onboard, and run performance management
• Manage yourself and remain effective through many challenges
• Leave the job when the time is right

Will Larson was the chief technology officer at Calm and the author of An Elegant Puzzle and Staff Engineer. He's also a prolific writer on his blog, Irrational Exuberance.

Managing people is difficult wherever you work. But in the tech industry, where management is also a technical discipline, the learning curve can be brutal—especially when there are few tools, texts, and frameworks to help you. In this practical guide, author Camille Fournier (tech lead turned CTO) takes you through each stage in the journey from engineer to technical manager.

From mentoring interns to working with senior staff, you’ll get actionable advice for approaching various obstacles in your path. This book is ideal whether you’re a new manager, a mentor, or a more experienced leader looking for fresh advice. Pick up this book and learn how to become a better manager and leader in your organization.

• Begin by exploring what you expect from a manager
• Understand what it takes to be a good mentor, and a good tech lead
• Learn how to manage individual members while remaining focused on the entire team
• Understand how to manage yourself and avoid common pitfalls that challenge many leaders
• Manage multiple teams and learn how to manage managers
• Learn how to build and bootstrap a unifying culture in teams

Recursion has an intimidating reputation: it’s considered to be an advanced computer science topic frequently brought up in coding interviews. But there’s nothing magical about recursion.

The Recursive Book of Recursion uses Python and JavaScript examples to teach the basics of recursion, exposing the ways that it’s often poorly taught and clarifying the fundamental principles of all recursive algorithms. You’ll learn when to use recursive functions (and, most importantly, when not to use them), how to implement the classic recursive algorithms often brought up in job interviews, and how recursive techniques can help solve countless problems involving tree traversal, combinatorics, and other tricky topics.   This project-based guide contains complete, runnable programs to help you learn:

• How recursive functions make use of the call stack, a critical data structure almost never discussed in lessons on recursion
• How the head-tail and “leap of faith” techniques can simplify writing recursive functions
• How to use recursion to write custom search scripts for your filesystem, draw fractal art, create mazes, and more
• How optimization and memoization make recursive algorithms more efficient

Al Sweigart has built a career explaining programming concepts in a fun, approachable manner. If you’ve shied away from learning recursion but want to add this technique to your programming toolkit, or if you’re racing to prepare for your next job interview, this book is for you.

As the digital economy changes the rules of the game for enterprises, the role of software and IT architects is also transforming. Rather than focus on technical decisions alone, architects and senior technologists need to combine organizational and technical knowledge to effect change in their company’s structure and processes. To accomplish that, they need to connect the IT engine room to the penthouse, where the business strategy is defined.

In this guide, author Gregor Hohpe shares real-world advice and hard-learned lessons from actual IT transformations. His anecdotes help architects, senior developers, and other IT professionals prepare for a more complex but rewarding role in the enterprise.

This book is ideal for:

• Software architects and senior developers looking to shape the company’s technology direction or assist in an organizational transformation
• Enterprise architects and senior technologists searching for practical advice on how to navigate technical and organizational topics
• CTOs and senior technical architects who are devising an IT strategy that impacts the way the organization works
• IT managers who want to learn what’s worked and what hasn’t in large-scale transformation

For years, companies have rewarded their most effective engineers with management positions. But treating management as the default path for an engineer with leadership ability doesn't serve the industry well--or the engineer. The staff engineer's path allows engineers to contribute at a high level as role models, driving big projects, determining technical strategy, and raising everyone's skills.

This in-depth book shows you how to understand your role, manage your time, master strategic thinking, and set the standard for technical work. You'll read about how to be a leader without direct authority, how to plan ahead to make the right technical decisions, and how to make everyone around you better, while still growing as an expert in your domain.

By exploring the three pillars of a staff engineer's job, Tanya Reilly, a veteran of the staff engineer track, shows you how to:

• Take a broad, strategic view when thinking about your work
• Dive into practical tactics for making projects succeed
• Determine what "good engineering" means in your organization

An effective Chief Technology Officer shapes almost every aspect of a modern business. This book shares the experience and advice of veteran CTOs and industry experts for handling IT crises, leading tech teams, and creating an inspiring vision for your company.

In Think Like a CTO you will learn:

• Effective interaction and relationship-building with other C-level executives
• Creating long term visions and executing on short term goals
• Interviewing, hiring, and terminating team members
• Negotiating salaries and managing promotions
• Architecting future-proofed systems
• Handling security breaches and ransomware attacks
• Putting together budgets and working with your CFO
• Identifying and managing outsourced vendor opportunities
• Managing and communicating bad news by leading with data, not passion
• Being the kind of leader that employees want to follow and emulate

Becoming a CTO is an incredible accomplishment. It’s also one of the hardest transitions a technologist can make. This high-power and high-pressure role demands skills that are rarely developed as a software engineer.

Think Like a CTO shines a light on all the areas an aspiring CTO needs to master to succeed. You’ll learn how to build incredible working relationships with the rest of the C-suite, transform a company with private equity, and recruit and manage your development team. With this book as your guide, you’ll quickly become a trusted leader figure with an inspiring vision for your company.