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HALFROCKET LABS · ENGINEERING

Engineering that moves businesses forward.

Backend systems, APIs, cloud architecture and technical leadership from an engineer with more than eight years of building platforms at scale. You work directly with me.

Discuss a projectSee what I do

What Labs does

Engineering and leadership, hands on.

Six services, one standard: I do the work myself, from the first architecture sketch to the last pull request.

All Labs services

Who you work with

You work directly with me.

Labs is me: one engineer with more than eight years of building distributed backend platforms and external APIs inside large organisations. When you hire Labs, the person on the first call is the person who reads your code, draws the architecture and writes the pull requests.

Most recently I have led engineering on external API platforms. Before that I spent seven years at Deloitte Digital, rising to technology consulting manager and leading engineering for clients including LEGO, Dyson and the UK Government. HalfRocket is where I bring that experience to teams who need it without hiring a department.

Viveak VadivelkarasanFounder and principal engineer, HalfRocket

Where the experience comes from

Tech lead for external APIs
Leading the design and delivery of APIs that partners and customers build on.
Kubernetes migrations
Led moves from serverless and from EC2 onto Kubernetes, without stopping delivery.
Event-driven platforms
Built and run event-driven systems handling around a million events a day.
AWS Certified Solutions Architect
Working day to day in TypeScript, NestJS, Java and Python, on AWS with Kubernetes and Terraform.

Career experience gained in employment, listed so you know who you are hiring. It is not a list of HalfRocket clients or results.

In depth

The work behind the titles.

Four areas where most Labs engagements land. Each one is hands-on work I do myself, scoped to what your team needs next.

Software engineering

Production code in TypeScript, Node and NestJS, Java or Python: web and mobile backends, external APIs and the tests and pipelines that keep them shippable. I work in your repository, follow your conventions and review every change properly.

The brief is rarely greenfield. More often it is a system that has grown, a team under pressure or a release that keeps slipping. I join, find the real bottleneck and fix it without pausing delivery.

  • TypeScript, Node and NestJS
  • Java and Python
  • Testing and CI

Cloud architecture

Foundations on AWS or GCP that are reliable, secure and sensibly priced. Everything is infrastructure as code with Terraform, so environments are reproducible and nobody depends on a console click someone made two years ago.

I have led migrations from serverless and from EC2 onto Kubernetes, and I know when a managed service is the better answer. Logs, metrics and alerts go in from the start, so you hear about a problem before a customer does.

  • AWS and GCP
  • Kubernetes and serverless
  • Terraform

APIs and integrations

External APIs are where I spend most of my working life: documented, versioned and pleasant to build against, whether the consumer is your own app, a partner or a public developer audience.

Integrations with payments, messaging and the platforms a business already runs, built on events and queues so they survive retries, rate limits and the occasional surprise from the other side.

  • External and partner APIs
  • Event-driven integrations
  • Payments and messaging

Architecture and technical leadership

Domain modelling, service boundaries and the trade-offs written down, so the system still makes sense when the people who built it have moved on. An architecture review from me comes with a prioritised list, not a slide deck.

For founders and leadership teams: technical due diligence, build-versus-buy decisions, roadmap reviews and fractional tech leadership, when you need an experienced voice in the room before you need a full-time hire.

  • Domain modelling
  • Architecture reviews
  • Due diligence
  • Fractional tech leadership

Selected engineering work

Products I designed and engineered.

TheCocoCard and Fixabee are AadhiPixels Ltd products I designed and engineered end to end; FlowFix is a self-initiated concept. They show how I build when every decision is mine. Client work appears only when it can be named.

All Labs work

How I work

Small steps, in the open.

Every engagement follows the same shape, whether it is a two-week review or a year of platform work. You see progress every week and can stop after any step.

  1. 1

    Understand

    I read the code, meet the people involved and learn how the business actually makes money. You get a short, honest write-up of where things stand and what matters most.

  2. 2

    Design

    Architecture, boundaries and a plan that can be delivered in slices. Decisions are recorded with their reasoning, so they can be revisited later.

  3. 3

    Build

    I work in your repository, with tests, reviews and pipelines in place. Small releases early, so feedback arrives while it is still cheap.

  4. 4

    Run and hand over

    Monitoring, runbooks and documentation your team can own. I stay close for the first stretch in production and step back when you no longer need me.

Let's talk about your platform.

Tell me what you're building, what's slowing you down or where you need a second opinion. I'll reply with questions, not a pitch.

Discuss a projectHow engagements work