Retail platform
Who
Our client, a burgeoning online retail market in the US, needed technological expertise and robust infrastructure to launch and scale their high-quality, customizable merchandise platform.
When
The client teamed up with us in 2017 during their initial funding round, seeking to build a reliable, scalable solution as they experienced rapid market growth.
What
The client required a comprehensive technology solution that could support their dynamic needs, from handling increasing customer traffic to ensuring seamless, continuous deployment of new features.
Our tech story
When our client embarked on their journey to revolutionize the online retail space with their customizable merchandise, they needed a partner who could understand and translate their vision into a scalable, robust digital solution. They sought technical expertise and a team that could foresee and adapt to the challenges of a rapidly growing business.
We assembled a dedicated team consisting of a Project Manager, DevOps Specialist, Solution Architect, Cloud Engineers, and Site Reliability Engineers. This team was tasked with continuously developing, maintaining, and scaling the client's platform, ensuring high availability and performance to match their growth trajectory.
Utilizing a comprehensive tech stack including NodeJS, RabbitMQ, Redis, MongoDB, and various AWS services among others, the team implemented solutions for load balancing, auto-scaling, and continuous integration and deployment, significantly improving the platform's reliability and performance.
Throughout the project, from its inception in 2017 to the ongoing developments, our team has been instrumental in reacting to the client's growth and proactively enhancing the system's architecture to support future expansion. The result is a resilient, efficient, and continuously evolving platform that has helped the client become a leader in the online retail market.
Project roadmap
2017-2019
Client onboarding and transformation from MVP to stable development
The introduction of DevOps and SRE into the project established a dependable development path, enabling the attraction of $120,000 during the pre-seed funding stage.2019-2021
Support and growth
Automating development processes and timely response to challenges allowed the project to scale by 100%. As a result, $1.9M was raised in the seed round.2021-2023
Migration from monolith to microservice architecture
The transition to k8s and the implementation of IaC on the project made the application even more stable and fault-tolerant. As a result, the project entered the top 500 fastest-growing companies in the US with 1308% growth.2023-present
Maintenance & Improvement
The project is still undergoing active development; our team continues optimizing, supporting, and developing the project infrastructure along with round-the-clock monitoring.Tech challenges
Black friday preparation
The application didn’t scale well, and the infrastructure was not ready for traffic spikes. We ensured stable work during the marketing campaign.
Kubernetes integration
Transitioning to Kubernetes was complex amidst other tasks. Our skilled team efficiently managed the migration, enhancing our system's scalability and reliability.
Monitoring enhancement
We established a robust monitoring system tailored to the project's scale, continuously adapting it to meet the evolving needs of the application.
Our tech solution
We initiated the project by containerizing the application using Docker, streamlining the development and deployment process. This set the stage for the subsequent architectural transformation.
Transitioning from a monolithic architecture to a microservices framework, we integrated Kubernetes to manage and scale services effectively. This shift was complemented by the development of seven additional applications, enhancing the functionality and performance of the main application. We implemented zero-downtime deployment strategies to ensure continuous operation during updates.
To achieve real-time monitoring, we employed Prometheus and Grafana for performance metrics and insights. Additionally, an ELK stack was established for comprehensive log analysis. For incident management and prompt response, Opsgenie was integrated for alerting and notifications.
We improved our CI/CD pipeline with self-hosted CircleCI runners, incorporating automated testing to ensure code integrity and quality. Dynamic deployment in Kubernetes was adopted for one of the applications, demonstrating our commitment to agile and responsive development practices.
Our infrastructure was codified using Terraform and Terragrunt, promoting consistency and efficiency in deployment. Routine tasks were automated through a suite of Ansible and Bash scripts, supporting rapid development and deployment cycles.
