Public case studies · 2026 edition

Nawfal Alim Fardana

Lead software engineer - payments & distributed systems

7+

years payment infrastructure

80M+

daily users served

DANA

Ant Group ecosystem

08

engineering case studies

Chapter 01 · Fintech backend engineering

Arus - Double-Entry Ledger

A production Go ledger proving money correctness through explicit locks, transactional outbox delivery, load evidence, and Family Finance shadow writes.

Arus ledger architectureAPI requests pass through a posting engine into PostgreSQL and an outbox relay that publishes to Kafka or Pub/Sub consumers.HTTP APIAPI-key ledger scopePosting engineIdempotency + ordered locksPostgreSQLEntries, postings, balancesOutboxSame DB transactionRelayFOR UPDATE SKIP LOCKEDKafka / Pub/SubLocal Redpanda, cloud Pub/SubConsumersDedupe by event_id

Editorial index

Chapters in the dossier

  1. 02

    Backend engineering

    Family Finance

    A multi-surface household finance platform with web, mobile, integrations, and backend-owned API boundaries.

    • Go backend and Next.js web app split across stable API contracts
    • Recruiter-readable UI flow and native mobile journey evidence
    • Honest backend maturity roadmap for Redis, Kafka, jobs, and observability
    Family Finance dashboard flow screenshot
    Published
  2. 03

    Product and platform engineering

    WebhookOps Audit

    A live webhook operations audit demo shaped through PRD, system analysis, QA, and implementation docs.

    • Live Cloud Run demo with token-gated access
    • Documented SDLC artifacts from PRD through QA
    • Webhook event handling and operational workflow framing
    Published
  3. 04

    Mobile and backend engineering

    Strava AI Insights

    A Strava companion whose owner audited his own product like an attacker, found auth and IDOR risks, then shipped source-backed hardening.

    • Self-audit found a missing auth layer, a client-trusted athleteId flow, and a practical IDOR chain
    • Fixes include signed mobile sessions, bearer ownership checks, token encryption, and controller security tests
    • Open gates stay visible: live OAuth/device QA, revocation, migrations, and diagnostic search caveats
    Strava AI Insights Android and coaching backend preview
    Published
  4. 05

    Platform engineering

    Telegram Bot

    A Hermes-based development bot proving agentic systems need enforcement layers, not instructions, before write-capable operations are trusted.

    • Security audit blocks direct GitHub write tools, sensitive paths, secret-like content, and unsafe MCP exposure
    • Action and completion audits cover proposal history, approval state, repository gates, and Cloud Build triage
    • Open limits remain explicit: real approved PR flow, operator live setup, credential rotation, and Hermes model hooks
    Telegram Bot approval workflow and Cloud Run operations preview
    Published
  5. 06

    Payments and settlement engineering

    Selaras - Settlement Reconciliation

    A Java/Spring Batch reconciliation engine that closes the Arus v1 loop with seeded break proof, balanced reports, and honest fixture-demo limits.

    • 5/5 break classes detected in the M3 demo transcript and seeded integration test
    • 0 false matches: planted broken records stay out of match rows
    • Report generation fails unless matched plus breaks balances to line counts
    Published
  6. 07

    Payments orchestration engineering

    Alur - Payment Orchestration

    A Go payment orchestration service that survives hostile PSP behavior with a 500-intent chaos gate, reaper truth, and exactly-once Arus booking.

    • 500-intent chaos storm covers timeout-after-charge, 5xx, duplicate webhooks, and out-of-order delivery
    • 0 double charges after reaper convergence and leased refund retries
    • Exactly-once Arus booking via same-transaction outbox and external-ref replay
    Published
  7. 08

    Disputes & chargeback engineering

    Banding - Dispute Lifecycle Engine

    A Go dispute and chargeback lifecycle engine proving durable deadlines, deterministic network events, and exactly-once Arus writebacks.

    • 500-dispute deadline storm covers every reason code and scenario token
    • 0 non-terminal and 0 past-deadline awaiting disputes after convergence
    • Exactly-once balanced writebacks with a restart-safe durable due_at scheduler
    Banding dispute lifecycle engine case study preview
    Published

Now building

Banding roadmap

Seed CLI, outbox max-attempts sweep, network-format fidelity, and the gated deploy are now tracked from the shipped Banding chapter.

View roadmap