Designing Scalable Backend Systems
May 1, 2026
A deep dive into the patterns and principles for building backend systems that scale.
SystemsArchitecture
Suraj Srivastav
Staff Software Engineer | Distributed Systems | Technical Leadership
15+ years building and modernizing large-scale distributed systems at Ford. Technical authority on cloud-native platforms (AWS, GCP) processing 2M+ monthly transactions. Focused on distributed systems, platform engineering, SRE practices, and AI-augmented developer productivity.
Focus Areas
What I think about and write about
🏗️
Distributed Systems
Large-scale cloud-native platforms (AWS, GCP), microservices, event-driven architecture, and systems handling millions of transactions.
🛠️
Platform Engineering
Building golden paths, standardized CI/CD pipelines, developer productivity, and infrastructure that scales to 190+ teams.
🚀
SRE & Observability
DORA metrics, trunk-based development, distributed tracing, and designing for 2-hour MTTR at scale.
🤖
AI-Augmented Engineering
Spec-Driven Development, GitHub Copilot integration, Model Context Protocol, and LLM-based developer workflows.
Latest Writing
AI Agents in Production Workflows
April 28, 2026
How to architect and deploy AI agents for real production use cases.
AISystems
Engineering Leadership at Scale
April 25, 2026
Lessons learned scaling engineering teams and maintaining velocity.
Leadership
Projects & Explorations
Things I'm building and experimenting with
Ford Experience Platform
GCP-native platform serving 2M+ monthly transactions. Architected cloud-native migration from legacy COTS to microservices and event-driven architecture. Increased customer retention to 36% (100%+ above industry benchmarks).
GCPMicroservicesEvent-Driven
Ford Pro Gateway
Micro-frontend platform enabling 190+ product teams with unified design system and consistent experiences. Simplified authentication across B2C, B2B, and internal systems.
ReactMicro-FrontendsArchitecture
Order-to-Delivery Transformation
Reduced order-to-delivery cycle time by 76% (60 to 14 days). Re-architected monolithic systems into Java/Spring Boot microservices. Launched 5 vehicle lines.
Java/SpringMicroservicesKafka
Now
What I'm focused on right now
- Technical authority on GCP-native platforms and cloud architecture
- Spec-Driven Development and GitHub Copilot integration at scale
- Building golden paths and standardized CI/CD pipelines for 190+ teams
- SRE practices: trunk-based development, DORA metrics, distributed tracing
- AI-augmented developer productivity with Model Context Protocol
- Published thought leadership on distributed systems and engineering practices