What was happening
Handshake connects students, employers and universities. Its platform team was underfunded, development was slow, and the platform could not handle more scale. No one had a vision for connecting the student, employer and university experiences.
The call
I set that vision. We moved from a monolith to domain-driven design, with event streaming and isolated domain services. We built a new session management service and rolled out an in-house design system. I set a multi-year platform strategy so the work would keep paying off.
What happened
The platform team grew from 15 to about 40 engineers in under six months. Latency dropped 50% on nearly every platform request. The new infrastructure handled peak season and the back-to-school surge with no downtime, and the design system cut the time to build web features by 30%.
What I'd tell a founder
Platform work pays off when someone connects it to what the business needs to do next.