Senior Backend Engineer

Core workflows executed on Celery in the background, but users experienced excessive wait times under realistic fund sizes. The root cause was in the data model and the queries built on top of it.

Profiled worst-case inputs and revised the data model to address the root causes. Replaced inefficient ORM queries with raw SQL where needed, and applied partial indexes where the data distribution warranted them.

Performance improved by 60 to 90 percent across the affected workflows. Wait times returned to acceptable levels under realistic load.

Taking on the senior IC role meant becoming the primary technical escalation point alongside the CTO for complex problems and production incidents.

Led technical design and architecture decisions while distributing responsibility across the team. Maintained open communication throughout the development cycle.

Served as the reliable technical layer between the team and the CTO. Complex problems were resolved faster and engineers had a clear point of escalation.

The team wanted to explore integrating AI into the application but had no baseline for what approach was viable or cost-effective.

Built a RAG text-to-SQL prototype to test feasibility. Evaluated it against realistic scenarios, measuring accuracy and operational cost.

The approach proved too expensive and insufficiently accurate to ship, but confirmed that AI integration was feasible and informed the direction the team pursued.

As senior IC, part of the role involved identifying optimization opportunities and evaluating new tooling or approaches before they reached the roadmap.

Conducted investigations across optimization opportunities and tooling feasibility. Formalized findings into written proposals submitted to the CTO.

Several proposals were adopted and scoped into product epics, feeding directly into the team's roadmap.