Architecture Cases
Real problems. Real constraints. Real tradeoffs.
These document how I think about systems — not how I code them.
Distributed Systems6 min read
Scaling upay's High-Throughput Golang Financial Gateway
Problem
Validating a single financial transaction required querying four downstream services sequentially, causing unacceptable API timeouts under peak load.
Achieved near-zero latency by parallelizing downstream lookups via Goroutines, and eliminated distributed database locks using the Saga pattern.
Security & Architecture6 min read
Architecting a Polyglot CIAM Engine for Digital Banking
Problem
Monolithic architectures failed to balance sub-second biometric authentication spikes with the heavy stateful complexity required for core banking synchronizations.
Achieved zero-downtime authentication spikes with sub-50ms latency at the edge, while safely orchestrating millions of stateful customer profiles alongside high-throughput gRPC microservices.
Performance & Caching4 min read
Defeating Cache Stampedes with Distributed Locking at UCB One
Problem
When highly concurrent UI layout caches expired, thousands of requests bypassed the cache simultaneously, instantly overloading the PostgreSQL database.
Eliminated database saturation entirely by converting 5,000 concurrent database queries into exactly 1 database query and 4,999 memory reads using Redis SETNX.