Freelance
Four years shipping backend systems for clients in four countries, a lot of it for game platforms.
Context: Briefing
From 2020 to 2023 I worked as an independent backend engineer. A lot of that work was for game platforms: server-side content and mods, the backend systems behind them, and the tooling to deploy it all.
Clients were in France, the US, Canada and the UK, and most of them were not technical: I gathered requirements directly with the owners and turned them into running systems.
What I did: Objectives cleared
- Delivered 30+ client projects end to end, from requirements to production.
- Designed and operated Java backend systems for platforms reaching 4,000 daily active users, tuning storage, latency and reliability for peak traffic.
- Built an automated server deployment platform (Docker, Redis caching, Linux, CI/CD) that standardized provisioning and rollback across clients.
- Hardened services with authentication, rate limiting and input validation.
- Coordinated a remote team of up to 4 developers with code reviews, shared standards and Git/GitLab CI.
Hardest problem: Boss fight
Peak hour on a live server
When thousands of players connect at once, every slow query and every manual deploy shows. I moved hot data behind Redis, diagnosed traffic anomalies and incidents down to the code, and replaced hand-run deployments with a repeatable Docker pipeline with rollback.
Results: Rewards
- 30+ projects shipped for clients in 4 countries
- Up to 4,000 daily active users served
- Provisioning and rollback standardized across clients