Production Machine Learning Systems (ML System
Design + MLOps)
Goal: Learn how to design, build, deploy, scale, monitor, and maintain production ML systems
from end to end.
Module 1 — Production ML Fundamentals
ML Lifecycle
• Problem Definition
• Data Collection
• Data Labeling
• Data Validation
• Feature Engineering
• Model Training
• Evaluation
• Deployment
• Monitoring
• Retraining
Core Concepts
• MLOps
• ML System Design
• Offline vs Online Inference
• Batch vs Streaming
• Online Learning vs Offline Learning
• Training vs Serving
• Data-Centric AI
• Reproducibility
• Technical Debt in ML
Module 2 — Data Layer
Data Sources
• Databases
• Data Warehouses
• Data Lakes
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• Streaming Platforms
• APIs
Data Storage
• SQL
• NoSQL
• Object Storage
• Feature Store
Data Engineering
• ETL / ELT
• Data Validation
• Schema Validation
• Data Versioning
• Feature Pipelines
Module 3 — Feature Engineering Infrastructure
Feature Pipelines
• Batch Features
• Real-Time Features
• Feature Reuse
• Feature Freshness
• Point-in-Time Correctness
Feature Stores
• Feast
• Tecton
• Hopsworks
Module 4 — Model Development
Experimentation
• Hyperparameter Tuning
• Cross Validation
• Reproducibility
• Random Seeds
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Experiment Tracking
• MLflow
• Weights & Biases
Model Registry
• Versioning
• Promotion
• Rollback
Module 5 — Software Engineering
Project Structure
• Modular Design
• Configuration Management
• Dependency Management
Code Quality
• Unit Testing
• Integration Testing
• Logging
• Error Handling
• Documentation
Module 6 — Serving Architecture
Inference Patterns
• Batch Inference
• Real-Time Inference
• Streaming Inference
• Asynchronous Inference
Serving Frameworks
• FastAPI
• BentoML
• Triton
• TorchServe
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• TensorFlow Serving
API Design
• REST
• gRPC
• Authentication
• Versioning
• Rate Limiting
Module 7 — Containerization
Docker
• Images
• Containers
• Dockerfile
• Multi-stage Builds
• Docker Compose
Module 8 — Orchestration
Kubernetes
• Pods
• Deployments
• ReplicaSets
• Services
• Ingress
• ConfigMaps
• Secrets
• PV / PVC
Deployment Strategies
• Rolling Update
• Canary
• Blue-Green
• Shadow Deployment
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Module 9 — CI/CD/CT
Continuous Integration
• Testing
• Linting
• Build Automation
Continuous Delivery
• Deployment
• Rollback
• Validation
Continuous Training
• Scheduled Retraining
• Trigger-Based Retraining
• Human Approval
• Automation
Module 10 — Workflow Orchestration
• Airflow
• Prefect
• Dagster
• Kubeflow Pipelines
• Vertex AI Pipelines
• SageMaker Pipelines
Module 11 — Monitoring & Observability
Infrastructure
• CPU
• GPU
• Memory
• Latency
• Throughput
• Availability
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Model Monitoring
• Prediction Distribution
• Confidence
• Accuracy
• Business Metrics
Drift Detection
• Covariate Drift
• Label Drift
• Concept Drift
Observability
• Logging
• Metrics
• Tracing
• Alerting
Module 12 — Scaling
Scaling Training
• Distributed Training
• Multi-GPU
• Multi-Node
Scaling Inference
• Autoscaling
• Dynamic Batching
• Load Balancing
• GPU Scheduling
• Caching
Module 13 — Optimization
• Quantization
• Pruning
• Knowledge Distillation
• ONNX
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• TensorRT
• OpenVINO
Module 14 — Cloud Infrastructure
Compute
• Virtual Machines
• Containers
• Serverless
Storage
• Object Storage
• Databases
Managed ML Platforms
• SageMaker
• Vertex AI
• Azure ML
Module 15 — Security & Responsible AI
Security
• IAM
• Secrets
• Authentication
• Authorization
• Encryption
Responsible AI
• Fairness
• Bias
• Explainability
• SHAP
• LIME
• Privacy
• GDPR
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Module 16 — End-to-End ML System Design
Be able to design the following systems:
Recommendation System
• Candidate Generation
• Ranking
• Feature Store
• Online Serving
• Monitoring
Named Entity Recognition
• Data Pipeline
• Training
• Serving
• Retraining
• Monitoring
OCR Pipeline
• Image Processing
• Detection
• Recognition
• Deployment
• Scaling
Fraud Detection
• Streaming Data
• Feature Engineering
• Low-Latency Inference
• Drift Detection
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Search Ranking
Document Classification
Image Classification API
Speech Recognition
LLM Inference Service
Chatbot Backend
For every design, discuss:
1. Functional requirements
2. Non-functional requirements
3. Data ingestion
4. Feature engineering
5. Training pipeline
6. Experiment tracking
7. Model registry
8. Deployment
9. API design
10. Scaling
11. Monitoring
12. Drift detection
13. Retraining
14. Rollback strategy
15. Cost optimization
16. Failure recovery
Complete Production ML Pipeline
Raw Data
↓
Data Validation
↓
Feature Engineering
↓
Feature Store
↓
Model Training
↓
Experiment Tracking
↓
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Model Registry
↓
Docker
↓
CI/CD
↓
Kubernetes
↓
FastAPI / Triton
↓
Load Balancer
↓
Monitoring
↓
Drift Detection
↓
Alerts
↓
Retraining
↓
Model Registry
↓
Production
Interview Checklist
You should be able to confidently answer:
• Design an end-to-end production ML system.
• Deploy an ML model serving millions of requests per day.
• Design a recommendation system.
• Design an OCR pipeline.
• Design a real-time NER service.
• Explain how to monitor production models.
• Detect and respond to data or concept drift.
• Roll back a faulty model deployment.
• Scale inference under heavy traffic.
• Build an automated CI/CD/CT pipeline for ML.
• Optimize latency, throughput, reliability, and cost.
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