Hi, I’m Rahul Dhar

I’m a Senior Backend Engineer with 10+ years of experience building large-scale distributed systems and correctness-critical platforms at companies like Wayfair, Freshworks, and Superset.

At Wayfair, I work on core inventory systems that manage billions of dollars worth of inventory across dozens of warehouses, processing hundreds of thousands of events every second. Throughout my career, I’ve been passionate about solving complex engineering problems, designing scalable architectures, and building systems that remain reliable under massive scale.

This newsletter is where I share lessons from that journey, and the one that’s still unfolding.

What you’ll find here

Career Growth

Practical insights on growing from engineer to technical leader, building influence, developing technical depth, and navigating the path toward Staff Engineer and beyond.

System Design

Real-world architecture breakdowns, design trade-offs, scalability challenges, and the reasoning behind engineering decisions.

Backend Engineering Deep Dives

Detailed explorations of distributed systems, databases, event-driven architectures, caching, performance optimization, rule engines, and the challenges that arise in production systems.

My goal is simple: to create the kind of practical, experience-driven content I wish I had earlier in my career, content that goes beyond theory and focuses on how things actually work in the real world.

If you’re passionate about backend engineering, distributed systems, system design, or growing your career as a software engineer, you’re in the right place.

Why Subscribe?

Every new article is delivered straight to your inbox. No spam, no fluff, just practical lessons, engineering insights, and real-world experiences from building systems at scale.