Context
I work primarily on backend systems that sit on the request hot path: API gateways, access control layers, subscription enforcement, and event delivery pipelines.
Most of my experience comes from building systems under real-world constraints - limited infrastructure budgets, evolving requirements, and partial failure conditions - where ideal architectures are rarely feasible.
How I Approach System Design
Constraints come first. Architecture is shaped more by cost ceilings, failure modes, and team capacity than by theoretical best practices.
Tradeoffs should be explicit. Every decision creates new failure modes. I prefer systems that fail in predictable and debuggable ways over ones that attempt perfect guarantees.
Reliability over elegance. Simple, well-understood tools are easier to operate under stress than clever abstractions.
Scope is a feature. I intentionally avoid over-generalization when it increases operational or cognitive load without immediate benefit.
What This Portfolio Is
This site is a collection of engineering case studies written as internal design reviews. The focus is on decision-making, failure analysis, and why certain compromises were accepted.
The goal is not to present perfect systems, but to document systems as they are built in production - imperfect, constrained, and shaped by reality.