Hassan Raza · Senior Software Engineer — Backend & Distributed Systems · DubaiReal-time systems that don’t lose data.
8+ years building backend systems that stay correct under load. I led the module that onboarded Saudi Aramco at Tenderd (YC S18), migrated a live Kafka telemetry pipeline with zero event loss, and scaled event-driven services for 5M+ users.
What I Do
I help teams build production-grade systems that are fast, reliable, and easy to evolve.
A modern backend, visualized.
An interactive topology of the systems I design: edge, API, events, data, workers, and storage — with the trade-offs that hold them together.
Click any node to see its role and the trade-offs that come with it. The dashed paths show event and request flow.
Where the intelligence actually comes from.
Most people see the LLM as one box. In production it's a pipeline. Here's what actually happens between a question and an answer.
Most people think of the LLM as a single step. In production it’s a pipeline: tokenize, retrieve, compose, generate, stream. Each stage has its own trade-offs.
Problems, constraints, and the trade-offs I picked.
Each write-up follows the same shape so you can compare: problem, constraints, architecture, trade-offs, outcome.
- 2024Delivering an Equipment-Booking Module to Onboard Saudi Aramco
Saudi Aramco needed an internal equipment-reservation system: departments reserve equipment, use it, and return it by a deadline so the next department can book it. It had to be delivered on a hard timeline as the condition for onboarding them onto the platform.
- 2025Migrating IoT Telemetry Ingestion to a New Schema with Zero Event Loss
A third-party device server that streams telemetry from the fleet was moving to a new cloud version. The change repointed writes from the existing location/alarm tables to new v2 tables. We ingest that data via CDC → Kafka, so the cutover risked dropped or duplicated pings across every device on the platform.
Work With Me
I help companies turn ideas into scalable, production-ready systems.
- MVP development (fast and scalable)
- System design and architecture
- Backend optimization and scaling
- AI integration and LLM applications
Things I've built and shipped.
Fleet Telemetry & Operations Platform
Real-time telemetry, timesheets, and safety metrics for heavy equipment fleets.
Music Distribution & Analytics Platform
A Go backend for cross-platform music release and track resolution.
Deep dives for the curious.
Essays about distributed systems and AI infrastructure. Focused on decisions and the trade-offs that make them.
Event-Driven Backbones with Kafka
When to reach for Kafka, what the outbox pattern really buys you, partitioning for ordering, and the things that break in year two.
Designing a RAG Pipeline for Production
Chunking, hybrid retrieval, reranking, grounding with citations, and the evals that separate demo-ware from production.
Multi-Tenant Isolation Patterns
Pooled vs siloed vs cells: picking an isolation model that matches your blast-radius budget, not the hype cycle.
Observability That People Actually Use
SLOs, burn-rate alerts, and why your dashboard graveyard is a product problem, not a tooling one.
Have a system design question?
Try the AI assistant — it explains architecture trade-offs, answers hiring questions, and points you to the right next step.
Let’s build something that scales.
If you’re hiring or planning a new backend/AI initiative, I can help with architecture, delivery, and execution.