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!