Alex Petrov

Alex Petrov is a software engineer and systems researcher who has worked on the internals of distributed databases for companies including Amazon and Google. His book Database Internals is the definitive reference explaining the data structures, storage engines and replication logic inside modern database systems.

Petrov writes for developers and infrastructure engineers who want to understand not just how to use a database but how one is actually built. Trending as a standard reading list item across the industry, the book's combination of theory and implementation detail made it an instant classic within the "system design" curriculum.