This 12-week roadmap is designed to maximize impact by focusing on high-leverage skills that accelerate your journey to becoming a Senior Developer, Lead Developer, and System Architect.
📌 Phase 1: Senior Software Developer (Weeks 1–6)
🔹 Week 1: Deep Dive into Java & Spring Boot
✅ Advanced Java: JVM internals, concurrency, memory management
✅ Spring Boot: Best practices for building scalable REST APIs
✅ Hands-on: Build a small microservice-based application
🔹 Week 2: Database Mastery
✅ SQL: Indexing, query optimization, transactions
✅ NoSQL (MongoDB, Redis): Use cases, scalability strategies
✅ Hands-on: Optimize queries and design a scalable database schema
🔹 Week 3: System Design Fundamentals
✅ LLD: Object-oriented design, API design, modularization
✅ HLD: Microservices, event-driven architecture, load balancing
✅ Hands-on: Design a highly available URL shortener
🔹 Week 4: Writing Clean, Maintainable Code
✅ SOLID, DRY, KISS, YAGNI principles
✅ Common design patterns: Factory, Singleton, Observer
✅ Hands-on: Refactor an existing project using best practices
🔹 Week 5: Performance Optimization & Debugging
✅ Profiling tools for Java (JVisualVM, JProfiler)
✅ Caching strategies (Redis, Memcached)
✅ Hands-on: Optimize an application’s response time by 50%
🔹 Week 6: Soft Skills & Mentorship
✅ Code reviews: How to give effective feedback
✅ Documenting technical decisions & APIs
✅ Hands-on: Mentor a junior developer or contribute to open-source
🚀 By the end of Week 6, you should be ready to take on a Lead Developer role!
📌 Phase 2: Lead Developer (Weeks 7–9)
🔹 Week 7: Leadership & Agile Project Management
✅ Agile, Scrum, Kanban methodologies
✅ CI/CD pipelines (Jenkins, GitHub Actions)
✅ Hands-on: Automate deployments for a real-world project
🔹 Week 8: Scaling Systems & Incident Management
✅ Load balancing, rate limiting, fault tolerance
✅ Debugging & incident response strategies
✅ Hands-on: Handle a high-traffic system failure simulation
🔹 Week 9: Stakeholder Communication & Decision-Making
✅ Writing effective technical proposals
✅ Balancing technical debt vs. business needs
✅ Hands-on: Present a tech solution to a business problem
🚀 After Week 9, you should be ready for a System Architect role!
📌 Phase 3: System Architect (Weeks 10–12)
🔹 Week 10: Large-Scale Distributed Systems
✅ CAP theorem, Event-driven architecture, CQRS
✅ Message Queues (Kafka, RabbitMQ)
✅ Hands-on: Design a real-time chat system architecture
🔹 Week 11: Cloud & DevOps Mastery
✅ AWS (EC2, S3, Lambda), Kubernetes, Terraform
✅ Security best practices: OWASP, encryption
✅ Hands-on: Deploy a highly available system on AWS
🔹 Week 12: Business Strategy & Cost Optimization
✅ Aligning technology with business goals
✅ Cost-effective cloud architecture & scalability
✅ Hands-on: Optimize an existing cloud-based system for cost efficiency
🏁 Final Thoughts
By following this 80/20 roadmap, you’ll systematically gain the high-impact skills needed for Senior Developer → Lead Developer → System Architect roles.
📌 Want a personalized roadmap based on your current progress? Let me know!
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