Architecture-led engineering
Systems that hold
when the load arrives.
SoftArchium architects and builds high-throughput distributed platforms, advises as a fractional CTO, ships product across Meta, Shopify and Android — and trains the teams that have to run it afterwards.
Fig. 01 — reference topology: append-only log, independently failable consumers, one durable store.
- 18 yrs
- designing distributed systems in production
- 6×
- median latency improvement on a legacy pricing engine
- 5,000/s
- sustained authorisation throughput, federal reliability
- 40%
- faster settlement after an event-driven rebuild
What we do
Four practices, one architectural standard.
The engagements differ in shape and length. The method does not: find the real constraint, design the boundary that removes it, and leave behind something the team can operate without us.
Systems architecture
Event-driven and distributed platforms designed to hold their guarantees under real load — and legacy monoliths taken apart without a big-bang cutover.
- Event-driven architecture
- Domain-driven decomposition
- Monolith to microservices
- Performance and latency
Fractional CTO
Executive-level technical ownership without a full-time hire. Strategy, roadmap and the case to the board — plus the engineering org that has to deliver it.
- Technology roadmapping
- Technical due diligence
- Engineering org design
- Board and investor communication
Cloud, platform & AI
AWS and Kubernetes done properly: infrastructure as reviewable code, deployment that makes rollback cheap, and AI automation applied where it actually pays.
- AWS and Kubernetes
- Terraform and CI/CD
- Observability and SLOs
- AI-driven process automation
Product engineering
Shipping product on other people’s platforms — Meta, Shopify and Android — with the same architectural rigour applied to the systems behind them.
- Meta platform apps
- Shopify apps and storefronts
- Android applications
- Backends built to outlive the app
Selected work
Numbers, with the reasoning attached.
Clients are described rather than named — every engagement was under contract, and none of them signed up to be marketing. The metrics are exactly as measured.
Exactly-once settlement at financial scale
An event-driven microservices platform for high-value settlement, where a duplicated or dropped message is a financial loss rather than a retry.
A transport management system built from zero
End-to-end technical strategy and cloud architecture for a greenfield TMS covering smart route planning, live tracking telemetry and freight automation.
Six-fold latency reduction by decomposition
A legacy monolithic pricing engine taken apart into twelve resilient services, cutting median latency six-fold and maintenance cost by well over half.
Corporate training
Taught by the person who had to make it work.
Seven programmes covering distributed systems, domain-driven design, cloud-native delivery, test automation, performance engineering, AI for engineering teams, and the staff-plus IC role. Every one of them comes out of an engagement on the work page, not a curriculum.
- Distributed Systems & Event-Driven Architecture
- Domain-Driven Design in Practice
- Cloud-Native on AWS & Kubernetes
- TDD, BDD & Test Automation
- Performance Engineering & Latency Reduction
- AI & Automation for Engineering Teams
- Architecture for Senior ICs
The principal
Suraj Chavda
Principal Architect
Eighteen years designing cloud-native, high-throughput distributed systems on AWS — and the part that matters commercially, bridging that work to the business case that funds it. Previously at Amazon Alexa and Avaya; post-graduate programme in AI & Machine Learning at Caltech CTME.
Engagements run from a single architecture review to a fractional CTO retainer. You work with the principal throughout — there is no handoff to a delivery team you did not meet.
- Based
- Pune, India · EU and US hours
- Depth
- Distributed systems, event-driven architecture, DDD
- Stack
- Python, Java, C#, TypeScript · Kafka · Kubernetes · AWS
- Languages
- English, Hindi · German (A1, in progress)