Notes from a Principal Platform Engineer
I design software
platforms that make change
inexpensive.
I’m Antonio, a Principal Platform Engineer. I share the decisions and tradeoffs behind software that teams can confidently maintain and evolve.
From the field
Business capabilities should outlive vendors.
Lessons from designing a commerce platform around pricing, payments, loyalty, and fulfillment.
Read the case study
Principles
All design principlesOptimize for the next engineer
Make dependencies, ownership, and failure behavior easy to understand. The next engineer should be able to build on a decision without reverse-engineering it.
Prefer practical simplicity
Choose the least complex architecture the team can confidently operate. Add machinery when the business problem justifies the cost of owning it.
Recent writing
All writing“All the Lego Pieces Are Around”: How I Approach Feature Estimates
How I use existing capabilities to reason about feature timelines, separating reuse from adaptation, new work, and the unknowns that need investigation.
Why a Modular Monolith Is Often the Right Platform for a Small Team
How small teams can build clear capability boundaries without taking on the operational cost of distributed systems before the business has earned it.
How I Use AI to Make Software Easier to Own
How I use AI to investigate, implement, challenge assumptions, and remove unnecessary complexity while retaining responsibility for engineering decisions.
Work with me
Bring the platform challenge.
I help teams review architecture, untangle enterprise integrations, and plan migrations without interrupting the business.