Backend engineer · Berlin · commercetools

TypeScript, Node.js, event-driven systems, multi-tenant APIs — the kind of stuff that processes millions of events and really shouldn't go down. I've been at commercetools for 6+ years, which in startup-to-scaleup years is basically a lifetime.

• Building and maintaining event-driven systems across multi-tenant infrastructure on GCP and AWS
• Building MCP infrastructure so AI agents can actually talk to our APIs (yes, the thing everyone calls "agentic" — I'm just building the plumbing)

Civil engineer in Algeria, picked up a Ruby on Rails book, never looked back. Agency work, then freelancing for a London client for eight months straight — no weekends, no days off. One of those tools got sold to market. Best advice I got back then, from an agency lead who watched me obsess over eslint rules while deadlines flew by: "Understand what the customer needs. The code is in service of that."

Commercetools sponsored my visa to Berlin in 2019. Since then I've been a frontend engineer, an engineering manager, a fullstack engineer, and now a backend engineer. I'd recommend the non-linear path — you figure out what you want by doing the things you don't.

I live with my wife (also a backend dev — and no, we don't debug at dinner. We just have dinner.) and two cats named Bublik and Ponchik. Adorable annoying cats.

Going way too deep on my Claude Code setup — custom skills, an obnoxiously long permissions deny list (I disabled the sandbox because it drove me nuts, so now I have to be my own sandbox), project context files, and a growth tracking loop that records what I learn, surfaces the gaps, and keeps me from fooling myself about where I actually am.

I use Claude as a collaborator, not a replacement — I still make the design decisions, weigh the tradeoffs, and push back when it's wrong.

If you made it this far, thanks for reading. I mean it.