ra.Raúl AlmeidaENGINEERING & ARCHITECTURE
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BACKEND ENGINEER · BASED IN MALTA

Backend engineering
for systems under pressure.

I help teams resolve fragile integrations, inconsistent data and database contention. I modernise established systems without unnecessary rewrites.

Explore my work Let’s talk

I’m Raúl Almeida, a backend engineer and systems architect. More about me →

GO / PHP / TYPESCRIPT / SQL
Raúl Almeida, smiling, wearing a blue jacket
Raúl AlmeidaBackend engineering & architectureMALTA / EUROPE
HOW I APPROACH THE WORK

Understand the problem. Make the smallest sound change. Verify it.

01 / SELECTED WORK

Two projects, explained.

Technical assignments with source code, design decisions and tests you can inspect.

TRANSACTION BOUNDARYSQL / BACKEND
01Lock the account
02Check idempotency
03Apply the operation
04Commit together

CORRECTNESS BEFORE CLEVERNESS.

BACKEND ENGINEERING · TECHNICAL ASSIGNMENT

A wallet that takes
consistency seriously.

Deposits, withdrawals and retries turn a small API into a useful test of engineering judgement. The interesting part is what happens when requests compete.

PHPMySQLIdempotency

Decision: Lock the account and commit the balance change with its operation record.

Boundary: A technical assignment, not a live banking product.

Read the wallet case study →
MEDIA SIGNAL SERVICECONTENT → CONTEXT
UNTRUSTED INPUT
Searchable articlesEnrichmentTrends

USEFUL OUTPUT. EXPLICIT LIMITS.

FULL-STACK ENGINEERING · TECHNICAL ASSIGNMENT

From news articles
to useful signals.

A small media intelligence service exploring boolean search, LLM enrichment and time-based aggregates — without treating a model response as a source of truth.

TypeScriptNestJSReactPostgreSQL

Decision: Separate domain rules from infrastructure and make model failures explicit.

Boundary: Model-generated enrichment can be wrong; it is not verified fact.

Read the media service case study →
02 / FIELD NOTES

Writing about backend systems.

Integration boundaries, reliable events and the details behind the implementation.

SELECTED WRITING / ORIGINAL EDITIONS

All six articles →
01
Legacy & integrations

Legacy integration without polling

Capture relevant changes with triggers and a transactional outbox, without rewriting the legacy application.

· ENGLISH · LEGACY TO EVENTS / 1 OF 4
02
Reliability & AI

Consumers that handle duplicates

Handle repeated events, protect the domain model and separate analytical reads from operational writes.

· ENGLISH · LEGACY TO EVENTS / 4 OF 4
03
Testing & delivery

Pruebas más rápidas en CI/CD

Cómo reducir la espera de las pruebas y los pre-push hooks sin renunciar a las comprobaciones importantes.

· ESPAÑOL
READ / FOLLOW

From triggers and outbox to idempotent consumers: a four-part series on evolving legacy integrations.

Follow the reading path →
03 / SHORT VIDEOS

Engineering problems,
explained in a few minutes.

Short videos about disconnected systems, manual work and choosing what to change. Original audio in Spanish.

The external player loads only when you press play. You can also open the original source.

Modernisation
YouTube
Audio in Spanish

Old software is not a reason to rewrite.

Start with the real constraint. Change a clear boundary, account for retries, and avoid turning an upgrade into a business risk.

Part of Technical decisions for growing businesses — six short videos, arranged as a suggested watching path.

Explore all six videos
04 / TALKS & CONVERSATIONS

Talks from the community.

Recordings about APIs, automation and business systems. Original audio in Spanish.

The external player loads only when you press play. You can also open the original source.

Open on WordPress.tv
WORDCAMP CARTAGENA · 8 JUNE 2024 · SPANISH

APIs y Automatización: Transformando tu WordPress en una Máquina de Negocios

Connecting WooCommerce, customer relationships and warehouse operations through APIs. A practical talk about making business systems work together.

Explore all three talks →
05 / ABOUT

Hi, I’m Raúl.
A backend engineer
based in Malta.

I’ve worked on e-commerce systems at PcComponentes and investment transaction flows at Dozen Investments.

That work has involved database contention, concurrent operations and the boundaries between systems. I care about what happens after a timeout or a partial failure, as much as the successful request.

I work with Go, PHP, TypeScript and SQL. I also founded AR Solución Digital, where I help businesses diagnose technical problems and plan changes to their systems.

Consulting through AR Solución Digital ↗
CONTACT

Have an engineering
problem to discuss?

Tell me about the system, what you’re trying to change and where you’re getting stuck.

Get in touch