Building Production-Ready LLM Applications
Beyond the prototype — what it really takes to ship AI at scale
Everyone can build a chatbot in an afternoon. But getting LLMs to behave reliably, cost-effectively, and safely in production is an entirely different challenge. Here's what I learned shipping three LLM-powered products.
Designing High-Throughput Event Pipelines
Kafka, queues, and the art of not losing messages
When your system needs to process millions of events per day without dropping a single one, your architecture choices compound. This is how I think about event-driven systems.
Kubernetes Cost Optimization That Actually Works
Cutting cloud bills without sacrificing reliability
Most 'optimize your Kubernetes costs' guides stop at right-sizing pods. I'll show you the full picture — from node groups to spot instances to KEDA.
If I Had to Interview Security Again
A thoughtful guide to security engineering interviews
A practical roadmap for approaching security engineering interviews — what to study, how to think about threat modeling questions, and the mindset shift that matters most.
The Art of the Boring Architecture Decision
Why the best engineers choose dull over clever
Every time I've chosen a 'clever' solution over a boring one, I've regretted it. After years of overengineering, here's my framework for making decisions that your future self will thank you for.
RAG vs Fine-tuning: Choosing the Right Strategy
A decision framework for AI engineers
Retrieval-Augmented Generation and fine-tuning solve different problems. Use the wrong one and you'll spend weeks wondering why your AI still hallucinates.
The Hidden Costs of AI in Production
Token pricing is just the beginning
Latency, retry logic, prompt engineering maintenance, eval pipelines, observability — the real cost of AI products isn't the API bill.
API Gateway Patterns for Microservices
BFF, aggregation, and when to keep it simple
Not every microservice architecture needs a sophisticated API gateway. But when you do — here are the patterns that actually work in production.
Sharding Strategies That Scale
Hash, range, and directory-based approaches compared
Database sharding is one of those topics where the theory is clean and the practice is messy. Let's talk about the mess.
Multi-Region Deployment Strategies
Active-active vs active-passive and everything in between
Going multi-region is expensive, operationally complex, and often unnecessary. Here's a framework for deciding if you need it — and how to do it right.
Serverless: When It Shines and When It Burns
Honest lessons from three years of Lambda and Cloud Functions
Cold starts, vendor lock-in, debugging nightmares — and also genuine magic for the right use cases. An honest assessment.
Zero Trust in Practice
Moving beyond the buzzword to real implementation
Zero Trust is the most misunderstood concept in security. Most teams say they're doing it. Very few actually are. Here's what it looks like when it's done right.
Securing LLM Applications Against Prompt Injection
The attack surface you can't ignore
Prompt injection is the SQL injection of the AI era. If you're building LLM-powered products and not thinking about this, you're shipping vulnerable software.
Developer Experience Is a Product Decision
Why internal tooling deserves the same love as user-facing features
Slow CI, confusing onboarding, brittle tests — these aren't just annoyances. They compound into weeks of lost productivity and team morale. DX is a business decision.