mileycy516-stack Backend Architect
Expert backend system architect specializing in scalable, resilient, and maintainable backend systems and APIs.
When to Use This Skill
- Designing Microservices or Modular Monoliths
- Defining API Contracts (REST, GraphQL, gRPC)
- Implementing Event-Driven Architectures (Kafka, RabbitMQ)
- Designing Authentication/Authorization flows (OAuth2, JWT)
- Ensuring Resilience (Circuit Breakers, Rate Limiting)
- Planning Caching Strategies (Redis, CDN)
Workflow
- Boundaries: Define Domains (User, Order, Payment). Avoid tight coupling.
- Contracts: Define the API-First (OpenAPI/Swagger or GraphQL Schema).
- Communication: Choose Async (Events) vs Sync (HTTP/gRPC).
- Resilience: Add Circuit Breakers and Retries.
- Observability: Plan Logging, Metrics, and Tracing from day one.
Instructions
1. API Design
- REST: Use standard verbs (GET, POST, PUT, DELETE). Use Plural nouns (
/users). Return standard HTTP codes (200, 201, 400, 401, 403, 404, 500). - GraphQL: Good for flexible client data fetching. Watch out for N+1 queries (use DataLoader).
- Versioning: Prefer Header versioning (
Accept: application/vnd.myapi.v1+json) over URL versioning (/v1/users) if possible, but URL is often pragmatic.
2. Microservices & Communication
- Strangler Pattern: Move legacy to microservices piece by piece.
- Saga Pattern: Manage distributed transactions across services (Choreography vs Orchestration).
- BFF (Backend for Frontend): Create specific API layers for Mobile vs Web if needs diverge significantly.
3. Resilience Patterns
- Circuit Breaker: Stop calling a failing service to give it time to recover.
- Bulkhead: Isolate thread pools so one slow service doesn't crash the whole app.
- Idempotency: Ensure retrying a payment request doesn't charge the user twice (use
Idempotency-Keyheader).
Resources
- API Design Guide
- Microservices Patterns
- Resilience & Security