Backend on Prateek Sharma

Endpoint maps over hand-rolled methods

Tue, 25 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve now written two client libraries for the same exchange API — one in Go , one in Java — and the thing I’d keep from both is the same: don’t write a method per endpoint. Describe the endpoints as data and dispatch through one function.

The shape of the problem

The API has roughly two dozen endpoints. They differ in four ways:

HTTP verb (GET, POST, DELETE)
path
whether the request must be signed
the response body

Everything else — building query params, adding a signature, choosing the verb handler, parsing the response — is identical. Writing a hand-rolled method per endpoint means writing that identical body 25 times, and then maintaining 25 copies of it when the signing scheme or the base URL handling changes.

Tidylnk

Sun, 23 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Tidylnk is a URL shortener I built to have a simple, self-hosted alternative to the usual third-party link shorteners, with an admin panel to manage and track links.

Tech stack

Backend — Go, serving the redirect and link-management APIs.
Frontend — a React admin panel for creating, organizing, and tracking shortened links.
Storage — PostgreSQL as the primary datastore for link records, with Redis on the redirect hot path for fast lookups.
Deployment — backend and database containerized with Docker and deployed on Railway.

Why I built it

I wanted a link shortener I fully controlled — no reliance on a third party’s uptime, rate limits, or analytics restrictions — and a project to exercise Go and Redis together on a workload where caching genuinely matters: redirect latency.

WazirX Go Connector

Sun, 23 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

WazirX is one of India’s largest crypto exchanges, and while its REST API is well documented, it doesn’t ship an official Go client. I wanted to poke at their API for a side project and didn’t want to hand-roll request signing and endpoint plumbing every time, so I built wazirx-connector-go and open-sourced it once it was in decent shape.

Avoiding ~25 near-identical methods

The exchange exposes close to two dozen endpoints — tickers, order book depth, order placement, withdrawals, sub-account transfers, and so on. Writing a hand-rolled method for each one would have meant the same boilerplate repeated two dozen times: build params, sign if needed, pick GET/POST/DELETE, hit the URL, parse the response.

WazirX Java Connector

Sun, 23 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

After building the Go connector for WazirX, I wanted the same thing on the JVM — but WazirX doesn’t publish an official Java client at all, REST or WebSocket. The REST half was a fairly direct port of what I’d already learned building the Go client. The WebSocket half turned out to be its own project.

Letting callers choose their failure granularity

For errors, I didn’t want every caller forced into one giant catch-all exception, but I also didn’t want to force a try/catch at every single call site. I split errors into two, with one extending the other:

CoinTracker

Mon, 01 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

CoinTracker is a crypto portfolio and tax platform. I worked on the ingestion and reconciliation side: getting on-chain data into the system correctly, and keeping wallet balances consistent across chains.

Engineering areas

Blockchain integrations

Integrated Cardano and Stellar, reading on-chain data from Snowflake for balance reconciliation, transaction parsing, and portfolio tracking.
Onboarded Akash and Axelar (cross-chain), plus Bitcoin Ordinals, Inscriptions, BRC-20, and Runes via the Ordiscan API.
Worked behind a unified blockchain abstraction so each new chain was a smaller, more predictable piece of work than the last.

Fault-tolerant wallet sync

Wrote the business logic behind Temporal workers for wallet-sync workflows: idempotent, retry-safe, and consistent across chains.
Built reconciliation pipelines and validation checks so cross-chain data disagreements surface as failures rather than silently wrong balances.

Data tooling

Built and consumed Flask REST APIs and CLI scripts for ingestion, validation, and reconciliation.
Used pytest and mypy to keep correctness and type safety enforced in CI.
Adopted Claude Code as an agentic assistant for feature work, debugging, and issue resolution.

Stack

Python · Flask · Temporal · Snowflake · pytest · mypy

Emission Critical

Sun, 01 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Emission Critical is a B2B SaaS platform for enterprise carbon footprint and sustainability tracking. I led the backend: the data model, the APIs, and the computation engine.

Engineering areas

Multi-tenant platform

Architected a multi-tenant PostgreSQL schema with tenant-level data isolation.
Integrated Auth0 for identity and multi-tenant RBAC.
Streamlined data ingestion through Excel parsing and automated AWS S3 pipelines.

Carbon accounting engine

Designed the engine for full Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions tracking and product carbon footprints.
Cut computation latency ~50% and improved throughput a further ~30% with better indexing and batch processing.

Search and lookups

Built parsers and Meilisearch-backed full-text search over public emission factor databases.
Exposed REST APIs for emission-factor lookups feeding downstream carbon computation.

Observability

Stood up observability with OpenTelemetry, SigNoz, and Kubernetes-native logging for real-time diagnostics.

Stack

NestJS · TypeScript · PostgreSQL · Auth0 · Meilisearch · AWS · Kubernetes · OpenTelemetry

Mind Sports League

Mon, 01 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Mind Sports League ran an online poker platform. I led development of the game and tournament features on top of the existing platform.

Engineering areas

Tournament features

Built advanced tournament mechanics: hand-for-hand play, re-entry, and table balancing.

Real-time backend

Engineered game-state management and an event-driven backend handling thousands of concurrent players with low-latency communication.

Training tools

Built a poker simulator integrated with an educational platform, so players could practise strategy and review analytics.

Stack

Real-time / event-driven backend · game-state management · AngularJS (simulator)

Yolobus

Sun, 01 Mar 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Yolobus operated intercity buses. I worked on the in-house systems for inventory and bookings.

Engineering areas

Global Distribution System

Designed the database architecture for an in-house GDS managing trip inventory and real-time bookings.

Booking engine

Migrated core services to Python / Django.
Built a serverless ticket-booking engine on AWS Chalice, improving maintainability and transaction scalability.
Implemented high-throughput booking APIs integrating third-party payment and inventory providers (e.g. Redbus, Paytm).

Stack

Python · Django · AWS Chalice · PostgreSQL · REST APIs

Adda52 — Delta Corp

Mon, 01 Sep 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Adda52 is one of India’s largest real-money poker platforms. I joined as a graduate trainee in 2014 and left in 2020 as a Senior Software Engineer, working across the game backend, load and resilience testing, and the public platform.

Role progression

Graduate Engineer Trainee (Sep 2014 – Oct 2015)
Software Engineer (Oct 2015 – Oct 2016)
Senior Software Engineer (Oct 2016 – Feb 2020)

Engineering areas

Game logic

Contributed to core poker cash-game and tournament-management modules.
Implemented the OFC poker variant end to end on the adda52live.com frontend (Angular 2).

Load and resilience testing

Enhanced Java-based user-behaviour simulators to load test real-time poker servers at 10,000+ concurrent users.
Built disaster-recovery systems for zero-downtime gameplay — restoring poker games and player state after a failure.

Platform migration

Led migration of the public gaming platform from PHP to Node.js, improving performance and maintainability.
Built Angular 2 interfaces for event bookings on adda52live.com and user-segmentation logic for targeted marketing.

Delivery

Developed Gradle-based CI/CD pipelines with Jenkins, automating builds and reducing integration friction.
Represented a 6-member team in sprint planning and stakeholder meetings, coordinating with QA, product, and DevOps.

Stack

Java · Node.js · Angular 2 · Jenkins · Gradle