Modernizing an established distribution platform
Architecture, integrations and technical leadership across digital and physical-book workflows.
The context
I joined Independent Publishers Group in August 2016 as a Senior Software Engineer and became Principal Software Engineer in March 2022. The team serves more than 2,600 publishers and imprints and 90 retailers.
My responsibility
My responsibilities include platform architecture and reliability, service integrations, critical implementation, technical planning, code reviews and developer mentoring. The current development team has four engineers.
The work
The team’s scope expanded from eBook distribution into modernizing physical-book operations, including print-on-demand, orders, inventory and metadata. I contributed to Kafka and SQL Server change-data-capture integrations, Azure QA environments and infrastructure migration planning.
I also co-designed the team’s AI development harness, connecting agents with distinct roles to issue tracking, source repositories, CI/CD and internal systems.
Result and evidence
The work spans production services and the processes used to maintain them. Publisher and retailer counts describe the platform’s scope; they are not a measure of traffic or personal revenue impact. Azure migration planning is distinct from a completed migration.
Leadership perspective
An established platform needs new capabilities while existing integrations continue to work. Technical leadership involves sequencing changes, reviewing consequential decisions and helping developers understand the whole system.