Backend · Product engineering
TrackDeck
Backend implementation, architecture, system design, and secure database engineering — built from scratch, later acquired by a logistics company.
- Role
- Co-founder (backend)
- Type
- Co-founded product
- Status
- Acquired
- Stack
- Node.js · PostgreSQL · System design
1 · The problem
The product needed a backend that could grow: clean data models, enforced access control, and API boundaries the frontend team could build against without surprises.
2 · My responsibility
Lead backend developer — architecture, system design, database schema, auth/authz, API contracts, and deployment, built from scratch.
3 · The architecture
REST API with layered architecture (routes → services → data access), relational schema with constraints and indexes designed up front, role-based access control enforced server-side, and CI-driven deploys.
4 · Key engineering decisions
Relational over document store for integrity guarantees; explicit service layer instead of fat controllers so business rules stay testable; RBAC middleware at the route level so authorization can't be forgotten per-endpoint.
5 · The hardest problem
Evolving frontend requirements kept pulling new shapes out of the API. Solved with versioned response contracts and a validation layer that rejects bad input at the boundary — noisy early, quiet later.
6 · What I would improve
Add contract tests between frontend and backend, plus read replicas and query-level observability before the next order-of-magnitude scale-up.