Backend Lead

Sara Ahmadi

Senior Backend Engineer

  • Tehran, Iran
  • 9 years of experience

Summary

Backend engineer with nine years of experience building web platforms for education and retail teams. Leads API design, data modelling and performance work. Comfortable owning a service from the first schema to production monitoring, and mentoring the engineers who maintain it afterwards.

Work Experience

Backend Lead

Mar 2021 – Present

ARCLINE · Full-time Tehran

Leads backend development across client projects.

  • Cut median API response time from 420 ms to 95 ms by redesigning the catalog queries.
  • Introduced automated tests that now cover 85% of the service layer.
  • Mentored four engineers, two of whom now lead their own projects.
  • Python
  • FastAPI
  • PostgreSQL
  • Docker

Backend Engineer

Jun 2017 – Feb 2021

Northwind Learning · Full-time Remote

Built the course and enrolment services of an online learning platform.

  • Shipped an enrolment service handling 30,000 students per term.
  • Reduced nightly report generation from 50 minutes to 6.
  • Python
  • Django
  • Redis

Projects

Catalog search service

Jan 2022 – Sep 2022

Technical lead

Full-text and faceted search for a retail catalog of 120,000 products.

  • Search results in under 80 ms at the 95th percentile.
  • Zero-downtime reindexing.
  • PostgreSQL
  • FastAPI

Project ↗

Skills

Backend

  • Python (FastAPI, Django) · Expert
  • PostgreSQL · Advanced
  • REST API design · Expert

DevOps

  • Docker · Advanced
  • GitLab CI · Intermediate

Education

BSc, Computer Engineering

Sep 2011 – Jul 2015

University of Tehran Grade: 17.8 / 20

Graduated in the top 10% of the class.

Certifications

Professional Cloud Developer

May 2023 · Expires May 2026

Example Cloud Institute Credential ID: ECI-0042

Verify ↗

Languages

  • PersianNative
  • EnglishC1

Awards

Engineering Excellence Award

Dec 2020

Northwind Learning

For the enrolment service launch.

Publications

Keeping PostgreSQL fast as your catalog grows

Nov 2022

Example Engineering Blog

A practical guide to indexing and query planning.

Read ↗

Volunteering

Mentor

Jan 2019 – Present

Women in Tech Tehran

Monthly mentoring sessions for early-career developers.

Talks

Designing APIs that last

Oct 2023

Tehran Backend Meetup

A talk on versioning and backward compatibility.

← All team members