Certified Back‑End Engineer

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Introduction

The Back‑End Engineer Career Path sharpened my focus on the server side—where data, logic, and performance intersect to power modern applications. Through structured lessons and production‑grade projects, I learned to design APIs that are fast, secure, and maintainable.

API Architecture

I architected RESTful and GraphQL endpoints, applied versioning strategies, and enforced data validation with libraries like Joi. Designing clean URL structures and using proper HTTP status codes ensured predictability for consumers.

Scalability & Performance

I profiled Node.js event loops, implemented caching layers with Redis, and experimented with horizontal scaling using Docker Swarm. Load‑testing a microblogging platform taught me to tune database indexes, compress payloads, and enable gzip to shave milliseconds off latency.

Security Fundamentals

From OAuth2 flows to rate limiting and helmet headers, I built defenses against common vulnerabilities. Detailed threat modelling exercises drilled in a security‑first mindset.

DevOps Integration

CI/CD became second nature as I scripted pipelines that lint, test, and deploy containers to staging environments. Monitoring with Prometheus and alerting with Grafana closed the loop between code and production health.

Key Projects Completed

• Microblog API – A Node/Express service handling 5k requests/sec with JWT auth and Redis caching.
• GraphQL Launchpad – A schema‑first GraphQL server exposing rocket‑launch data with Apollo Server.
• Image Optimiser – A queue‑based service that ingests uploads, resizes images, and streams them to S3.

Next Steps

I am eager to tackle distributed systems challenges, deepen my knowledge of Go for high‑throughput services, and contribute to open‑source middlewares.