Gagandeep Singh

About

Hello 👋
I’m a Software Engineer with over a decade of real-world experience building and evolving backend systems. My journey has taken me from writing features and fixing production issues to leading teams and shaping technical direction. Working on systems at different stages has given me a clear perspective on trade-offs — when a system needs a rethink, when refactoring is enough, and when optimization matters more than change.
Alongside backend engineering, I have a strong foundation in Unix fundamentals and AWS, allowing me to reason about systems inside out — from code to infrastructure — and build solutions that are practical, reliable, and maintainable.

I write about design, refactoring, engineering culture, and productivity, drawing from hands-on experience building, scaling, and maintaining real-world software systems on my blog. My writing focuses on practical lessons, trade-offs, and decisions engineers face as systems and teams grow.

Skills

Languages

Ruby, Java, JavaScript

Frameworks

Rails, Bootstrap

Datastores

Postgres, Redis, Kafka

Cloud / Servers

AWS, Ubuntu, Unix, MacOS, Nginx

Containerization

Docker, Docker-Compose, Kubernetes

Observability

Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog, NewRelic, Bugsnag

Collaboration

JIRA, Linear, Confluence, Slab, Slack, GitHub

Team Skills

Stakeholder Management, Strategic Planning & Direction, Mentorship

Professional Summary

Branch International Financial Services Remote (India)

Senior Software Engineer (B3) June 2024 - Present

Built a customer support Chat Assistant, reducing support load by ~30%.
Deprecated a complex legacy system, removing terabytes of unused data and significantly reducing long-term maintenance cost.
Shaped technical direction by driving modularization, simplifying patterns, and removing hidden dependencies.
Led high-impact refactoring initiatives, resulting in clearer interfaces, fewer edge cases, and more reliable systems.
Acted as a cross-team reviewer for backend and infrastructure work, identifying design risks early and preventing costly rework.
Improved delivery predictability by simplifying critical systems before execution and aligning teams on realistic scope.
Reduced async friction in a remote-first setup by unblocking teams with clear documentation, video walkthroughs, and shared technical context.

LocoNav India Private Limited Hybrid (Gurugram, India)

Staff Software Engineer Dec 2020 - May 2024

Member of Technical Staff Feb 2018 - Nov 2020

Here, I got a chance to

Hustle in an early-age startup environment and deliver very fast.
Scale myself by automating, delegating, hiring.
Learn to say No.
Learn to be a better interviewer. Interviewed > 200 engineers.
Asking good questions, talking to non-technical people including end customers.
Work on AWS infrastructure inside out - setup infra, do reservations, optimise costs.
Build hacky tech, scalable tech and everything in between.
Understand difference between working code and good code.
Learn Saas application whitelabelling and automating many aspects of it.
Understand what are microservices and when we should/shouldn't do it.
Refactor and delete a lot of code (seriously).

JTG E-Business Software Pvt. Ltd. Onsite (Gurugram, India)

Sr. Software Engineer Oct 2016 - Feb 2018

Software Engineer Jun 2015 - Oct 2016