Business reporting performance
Moved reporting from Oracle to PostgreSQL and tuned queries, so critical payment reports load 50% faster.
Berlin, Germany · 15 years of experience
Prerna Golani
Senior Backend & Cloud Engineer
Staff-Level Scope in Architecture & Distributed Systems
JavaScalaAWSGCPDistributed SystemsPython
I architect backend platforms and build them hands-on, covering messaging systems, databases, and cloud infrastructure, and de-risk every big decision with a working POC before we commit to it.
Career Highlights
Engineering problems I've owned end to end
Google Pub/Sub migration POC
Built the Pub/Sub POC and ADRs behind a 4-month on-prem to GCP migration, testing throughput, at-least-once delivery and failure handling.
Kafka
Built the department's first Kafka POC with Schema Registry and took it to production at 1,000 transactions/sec, with strict schemas and reliable message processing.
Backend Systems Across Startup to Enterprise
Fourteen years building backend systems, from fast-growing product companies like MakeMyTrip and Delivery Hero to large banks such as Deutsche Bank and Macquarie. That includes an order tracking service at Delivery Hero handling 10M+ orders a month across multiple markets, and a team of 8 engineers led as tech lead.
Centralised logging & cost optimisation
Designed a centralised Fluent Bit → S3 → BigQuery logging setup that cut infrastructure costs by 30%. Trimming oversized SQS payloads and right-sizing pod limits saved a further ~10%.
Fintech & payment systems
Backend work on payment and compliance platforms, where correct data, audit trails and uptime matter most. Streamlined runbooks cut support effort by 50%, and Prometheus and Grafana monitoring was adopted by 4 teams.
Certifications
Google Cloud certified
Professional Cloud Architect
Google Cloud
GCPAssociate Cloud Engineer
Google Cloud
GCPConference & Technical Talks
What I learn, I share. What I share, scales.
React Berlin Meetup2023
Calculus of Serverless Programming
Spoke about serverless programming using AWS Lambda, explaining how serverless changes application design, deployment, and scaling, with practical examples for developers.
Bank on Tech, Deutsche Bank2025
Cracking the Cloud: How I Transformed Work Experience into Cloud Milestone
Shared my journey toward the Google Professional Cloud Architect certification and how hands-on work on hybrid connectivity between on-premises systems and GCP helped turn cloud architecture concepts into practical understanding.
Delivery Hero Engineering Guild
Choosing Between DaemonSet and Sidecar Patterns
Presented how to choose between DaemonSet and sidecar deployment patterns for logging and observability, comparing trade-offs around isolation, resource usage, scalability, operational overhead, and failure handling.
Tech Blog
Learning, building, and sharing along the way.
I write about backend engineering, cloud, distributed systems, and technologies I explore hands-on, focusing on practical lessons, trade-offs, and what engineers can apply in real systems.
I Tried FastAPI as a Java Engineer — Here's What Surprised Me
A practical comparison of FastAPI and the Java/Spring ecosystem from a backend engineer's perspective.
PythonFastAPIJavaBackend Engineering
Read on Medium
Good Engineers Solve Problems. Great Mentors Help Others Learn to Solve Them
Mentoring is not about handing over answers. It is about helping engineers build the judgement to work through problems on their own.
MentorshipEngineering LeadershipCareer Growth
Read on Medium
DynamoDB with LocalStack & Terraform
Exploring local AWS development with DynamoDB, LocalStack, and infrastructure as code.
AWSDynamoDBTerraformLocalStack
Read on Medium
Three Ingredients to Master Kubernetes Commands for the CKAD Exam
Practical techniques for becoming faster and more confident with Kubernetes commands while preparing for CKAD.
KubernetesCKADKubectl
Read on MediumContact
Have a system to scale? Let's talk.
Open to senior and staff-level backend & cloud roles. Reach me on LinkedIn or by email.