It has been a while since we introduced any team members but we are back with this wholesome ritual. Today we introduce staff cloud native engineer Andrew Chan, who is going to tell us about his experience at Infinite Lambda in the context of his passion, viz. technology.
Andrew holds a BA in Computer Science from the University of Hong Kong as well as a Master’s in Business Administration from Cambridge University. He is a member of our UK team and is currently based in London.
How long have you been with Infinite Lambda, Andrew?
I joined Infinite Lambda quite early and I have been with the company for two and a half years now.
Tell us briefly about a recent tech challenge you resolved successfully. You can be as nerdy about it as you like.
We built a challenger bank from scratch in London and integrated it with the Clear Bank for payment and Visa for card transactions. The system was built around event sourcing, on Apache Kafka, across multiple availability zones in AWS. The latency had to be kept near real time, as the Visa card network required all transactions to be approved within 1 second. As you would expect with any core banking system, the system must remain available even during deployment and outage, which we ensured by leveraging Kubernetes, Helm and other DevOps tools.
What projects are you working on now?
I have just finished a project with one of the largest investment companies in the UK to build a near real time modern data pipeline to enable better business analysis and machine learning.
Currently, I am working for a UK mobile network designing and implementing an event-driven platform on Apache Kafka. The goal is to increase service reliability and operational responsiveness, as well as to accelerate new products roll out.
What are your professional goals?
I got certified as a AWS Solution Architect, Confluent Certified Developer for Apache Kafka and Confluent Certified Administrator for Apache Kafka all during my time in Infinite Lambda. I have also spoken at the Kafka Summit to share our expertise and experience in building a challenger bank. My goal is to continue to help businesses move to event-driven architecture especially with Apache Kafka.
What do you find exciting in your role?
I get to work with some of the best engineers and delivery leads who will push me on sharpening my ideas and strengthening implementations.
Remote or office?
Apart from the first couple of months, I have been working mostly remotely at Infinite Lambda. However, we often get together for offsites and dinners, so we’re not missing out on the fun.
Andrew is looking for new buddies to solve cloud native riddles with. Join him now.
Get to know more team members too.