Self-paced systems thinking training for engineering teams, ERGs, and bootcamps. Group discounts, single-invoice purchasing, and a ready-made 4-week cohort plan.
AI handles more of the routine coding every quarter. That pushes your engineers, especially those early in their careers, to think like architects much sooner than previous generations had to. Execution is being commoditized; judgment is not.
The question is no longer "can your engineers build it?" AI solved that. It's "do they know what to build, and why?" That's an architecture skill, and most early-career engineers were never taught it.
The 7 building blocks + 3 external entities model any system your team will ever touch: Instagram, Netflix, Stripe, or your own product. Engineers learn a shared vocabulary for design discussions.
The same framework is taught at UC Berkeley's School of Information. The core articles are free and open source, so your team can evaluate the material before you spend a dollar.
Four sequential courses take an engineer from "I can name the blocks" to "I can design and defend a real system." Everything is self-paced with lifetime access.
The foundation, fully produced: 12 video lessons, 2 interactive Python labs, a real-world case study, a comprehensive assessment, and a 3-part system design challenge with AI grading. About 6 hours of focused work.
Content systems (Netflix, Instagram), real-time systems (Slack, WhatsApp), and business integration (Stripe, Shopify). All lessons, labs, and challenges are live now; video walkthroughs are rolling out through Q3 2026.
Every course ends with open-ended design work, not multiple choice. Members get individual written feedback on their architecture decisions, the closest thing to a design review without scheduling one.
Simple volume discounts off the standard per-seat prices. One invoice or per-seat checkout codes, whichever your purchasing process prefers.
| Seats | Course I only | Full bundle (Courses I–IV) |
|---|---|---|
| 1–9 | $99 / seat | $441 / seat |
| 10–29 25% off | $74.25 / seat | $330.75 / seat |
| 30+ 40% off | $59.40 / seat | $264.60 / seat |
Bundle pricing reflects the current early-bird rate for Courses II–IV ($114 each while video walkthroughs are being recorded). Every seat includes lifetime access, so your team keeps the materials, and gets the videos, forever.
Email hello@systemthinkinglab.ai with roughly how many engineers you want to enroll and whether you want Course I or the full bundle. You'll get a quote the same week.
A single invoice / PO for the whole group, or individual checkout codes your members redeem themselves. Both work; pick whichever clears your purchasing process faster.
Send a list of member email addresses and access appears in their accounts. Sign-in uses magic links, so there are no passwords to manage and nothing for IT to install.
The course is self-paced, but groups get far more out of it together. Use the 4-week cohort plan below: members watch lessons on their own, then meet briefly each week to apply the ideas to your own systems.
A week-by-week cadence for running Course I as a group, with a discussion prompt for each weekly meetup. No instructor required: the discussions apply each week's blocks to your own product.
Lessons 1–4: the 7 building blocks, their code implementations, and how blocks map to real technologies (Redis, Postgres, S3, Kafka).
Meetup prompt: pick one production system your team owns and redraw it as building blocks on a whiteboard. Where does the diagram get fuzzy? That's where the design is least understood.
Lab 1 (Queue + Worker in Python), then Lessons 6–7 on the 3 external entities, then Lab 2 (Time + Worker).
Meetup prompt: where do users, external services, and time triggers enter your product? List every scheduled job your team runs and what breaks if it fires twice.
Lessons 9–10 on trade-off analysis and pattern recognition, the Link Shortener case study, and the course assessment.
Meetup prompt: take one architecture decision your team made in the last year and re-argue it in block terms. Would the framework have led you to the same choice?
The 3-part design challenge: design an MVP, evolve it for viral growth, then add monetization. Each part gets AI-graded written feedback.
Meetup prompt: members present their challenge designs to the group. Compare approaches: where did people choose different blocks for the same requirement, and who had the better trade-off argument?
Finishing Course I? Cohorts continue into Courses II–IV at the same weekly rhythm, one course per month. The full bundle covers the whole path.
Not currently. The program is designed to run self-paced with your own internal discussions, and the cohort plan above gives you the week-by-week structure. Teams consistently report the internal discussions are where the material sticks, because they're about your systems, not generic examples.
Yes. The 7 framework articles are free and open source, the building blocks game requires no account, and free video lessons are available. Course I's full curriculum is listed on the course page.
Yes. Many groups start with Course I to validate the format, then upgrade. Seats can be upgraded to the full bundle later; the group discount applies to whatever tier your total seat count reaches.
All lessons, labs, challenges, and assessments for Courses II–IV are live now as reading content. Video walkthroughs are being recorded and roll out through Q3 2026. Course I is fully produced today, which is why cohorts start there, and every seat has lifetime access, so members automatically get the videos as they land.
About 6 hours of focused work per course. As a cohort: 4 weeks per course at 1–2 hours per week, plus a short weekly discussion. The full 4-course path runs about 4 months at that pace.
Engineers in their first 0–5 years, career changers, bootcamp grads, and anyone whose role is shifting from writing code to directing AI that writes code. Senior engineers tend to use it as a shared vocabulary to make design reviews faster.
Continuing Lecturer at UC Berkeley School of Information. Engineering Manager with 15+ years experience at Pinterest, AncestryDNA, and Morgan Stanley. Teaching engineers to think in systems.
Learn more →Tell us your seat count and whether you want Course I or the full bundle. You'll have a quote, and a single invoice if you want one, the same week.
Email hello@systemthinkinglab.aiPrefer a form? Use the contact page and pick "Partnership Inquiry."
