Engineering Notes

Thoughts on scalable systems, backend architecture, and production engineering.

MongoDB Optimization: Indexes & Schema Design

Techniques for optimizing MongoDB performance for read-heavy applications, including TTL indexes, compound indexes, and efficient schema modeling.

How I designed a robust fallback system using the Gemini API when semantic search fails to yield high-confidence matches.

How I achieved sub-50ms latency for nearest-neighbor semantic search across thousands of mathematical documents using Pinecone vector database.

A deep dive into Protocol Buffers, multiplexing, and why gRPC dramatically improved our internal inter-service latency.

How I optimized an Express.js backend using Redis caching, worker threads, and PM2 cluster mode to handle massive traffic spikes.