NIK AFIQ

Tokyo, Japan nik@nik4nao.com | github.com/nikafiq | nik4nao.com

PROFESSIONAL SUMMARY

Backend engineer with 3 years of professional experience designing, building, and operating distributed backend systems on GCP and AWS. Strong in Go and Python, with hands-on production experience in high-throughput event-driven services, Kafka-based pipelines, Kubernetes, and cloud-native data platforms. Experienced in designing systems with strict reliability, ordering, idempotency, retry safety, and production-safe migration requirements. Applies AI/LLM tools with deliberate guardrails in daily workflows. Trilingual in English, Japanese (JLPT N1), and Malay. Strong typed-language foundation and able to ramp quickly into Java backend development.

SELECTED HIGHLIGHTS

Designed and operated a Kafka + GKE + Cloud Spanner backend pipeline for correctness-sensitive, high-throughput user data synchronization with per-account_id ordering, at-least-once delivery, and durable retry handling.
Architected event-driven backend services under constraints including 100–120 TPS steady load, 600 TPS burst, 1500 TPS downstream cap, and 1500 TPS sustained Spanner read traffic across two production services.
Achieved ~30% fewer duplicate downstream calls via singleflight coalescing; separately refactored a 1500 TPS Spanner read service (hashed phone number lookup, removed non-indexed searches), cutting CPU by ~30%.
Built cloud-native platforms across GCP, AWS, and Azure using Kubernetes, ECS/Fargate, Lambda, Aurora, DynamoDB, and Kafka.
Bilingual/trilingual engineer (EN/JA/Malay) with daily cross-functional communication across Japanese and overseas teams.

WORK EXPERIENCE

株式会社ホープス (Hopes Co., Ltd.) — Tokyo

Backend Engineer | Aug 2025 – Present

Dispatched to a major domestic telecommunications carrier as part of a next-generation carrier messaging platform initiative. Designing and operating a distributed GCP/GKE backend pipeline bridging high-volume upstream message delivery with a downstream consent fulfillment API.

Proposed and led adoption of a Kafka-based queuing architecture; designed the end-to-end pipeline with GKE, Managed Kafka (8 partitions keyed by account_id), and Cloud Spanner under a 1500 TPS downstream global cap with strict per-account_id ordering
Designed request coalescing with singleflight, reliable offset commit ordering (offsets committed only after durable Spanner writes), graceful shutdown, and a cronjob-based retry pipeline — achieving at-least-once delivery with no data loss on crash
Refactored the user-info-fetch API (a separate Spanner read service accessed by the Gateway aggregator team at 1500 TPS): guided a junior engineer through initial implementation, then led a full refactor introducing hashed phone number lookup, removing non-indexed searches, and tuning indexes — cutting CPU usage by ~30% under sustained load
Led Locust performance testing at 120 TPS steady and 600 TPS burst; used results to right-size GKE CPU and memory for stable production behavior
Designed OpenTelemetry + Datadog + Wiz observability stack; built CI controls with semantic version tag enforcement and least-privilege Workload Identity
Led TDD adoption, authored team dev guidelines, identified and escalated a 1-month deadline slip, and stepped up as informal tech lead during a leadership gap
Applied AI tools (Copilot, Claude, Gemini, ChatGPT) in daily workflows with deliberate guardrails: output validated through testing and review, AI excluded from security-sensitive logic

株式会社ニッポンダイナミックシステムズ — Tokyo

Full Stack Engineer, IT Solutions — Pharma Market Team | Apr 2023 – Jul 2025

Backend, cloud infrastructure, data platforms, and internal application development for enterprise clients, primarily on AWS with some Azure-based delivery.

Built a scalable analytical DWH on Amazon Aurora for a pharmaceutical client, integrating Salesforce and multiple external sources via ECS/Fargate and Lambda ETL pipelines; designed for HA with Multi-AZ failover
Constructed a SaaS data lake using AWS CDK, Glue, TypeScript, and Python, automating ETL ingestion across heterogeneous data sources
Built a license authentication service using Node.js, Docker, Azure Web Apps, and Azure AD B2C; owned requirements definition through client delivery
Automated monthly maintenance operations (AMI updates, patching, regression testing, blue/green deployments) via AWS CodePipeline and Azure Pipelines
Mentored junior engineers on cloud architecture; functioned as bilingual (EN/JA) liaison between domestic and overseas engineering teams

SKILLS

Category	Details
Languages	Go, Python, TypeScript/JavaScript, Java (learning; strong typed-language foundation)
Backend	Distributed systems, event-driven architecture, REST APIs, pub/sub, concurrency, retry design, idempotency, fault tolerance
Cloud — AWS	ECS/Fargate, Lambda, Aurora/RDS, DynamoDB, Glue, CDK, CodePipeline, Bedrock, Secrets Manager
Cloud — GCP	GKE, Cloud Spanner, Managed Kafka, BigQuery, Cloud Trace
Cloud — Azure	Web Apps, ADB2C, Azure Pipelines
Data	MySQL, Aurora, PostgreSQL, DynamoDB, Cloud Spanner, Kafka, Redis
DevOps	Docker, Kubernetes, ArgoCD, CI/CD, IaC (Terraform, AWS CDK, Ansible)
Observability	OpenTelemetry, Datadog, distributed tracing
AI Tooling	GitHub Copilot, ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude — applied with guardrails: test-validated output, excluded from security-critical paths
Security	VPC, WAF, Security Groups, Secrets Manager, Workload Identity, Wiz

CERTIFICATIONS

Certification	Issued
AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate (SAA)	Oct 2024
AWS Certified Developer – Associate (DVA)	Dec 2024
AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner (CLF)	Apr 2024
基本情報技術者試験 (FE) — IPA Fundamental IT Engineer	Aug 2024
JLPT N1 — Japanese Language Proficiency	Dec 2022

In progress: AWS Solutions Architect – Professional (SAP), Applied Information Technology Engineer (AP)

EDUCATION

Tokai University — Bachelor of Engineering Major: Electrical and Electronic Engineering Minor: Information Technology Graduated: March 2023

ADDITIONAL

Languages: English (business), Japanese (business, JLPT N1), Malay (native)
Homelab: Self-hosted k3s cluster, Gitea, Ansible/IaC, ArgoCD — gitea.nik4nao.com (mirrored to github.com/nikafiq)
Dev blog / personal site: nik4nao.com

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