shashidhar

Projects

A selection of backend and distributed systems projects I’ve built to explore reliability, performance, and real-world constraints.

gammaDB

PostgreSQL Internals · Columnar Storage · C/C++

Analytical PostgreSQL extension for vectorized execution.

  • -Developed a native Postgres extension to bridge transactional and analytical workloads without relying on third-party OLAP engines.
  • -Implemented columnar storage formats and vectorized query execution to process row batches efficiently.
  • -Significantly improved data compression and read speeds for analytic queries directly within the database.

Learnings: Working inside Postgres internals highlighted the complexities of memory contexts, buffer management, and the trade-offs between row-oriented and column-oriented layouts for CPU cache efficiency.

queueCTL

Node.js · SQLite · Asynchronous Queues

CLI-based background job orchestration and persistent queue.

  • -Engineered a robust asynchronous task processing system backed by SQLite for state persistence.
  • -Designed a concurrent worker pool architecture with strict at-least-once delivery guarantees.
  • -Built comprehensive failure handling, including automatic retries, exponential backoff, and Dead Letter Queue (DLQ) routing for poisoned jobs.

Learnings: Handling concurrent SQLite writes and dealing with worker crashes taught me the nuances of database locking, transaction isolation, and preventing race conditions in state management.

deltax

API Gateway · Load Management · Distributed Systems

API gateway for isolating computationally intensive workloads.

  • -Designed a reverse-proxy routing layer to sit between client requests and backend compute nodes.
  • -Safely isolates expensive operations by managing load control, request delegation, and timeout constraints.
  • -Prevents main application servers from being overwhelmed by blocking tasks or heavy computational spikes.

Learnings: Abstracting heavy compute taught me about backpressure mechanisms, network I/O bottlenecks, and the critical importance of circuit breakers when upstream services degrade.

Hashd

Python · Celery · RabbitMQ

Distributed ETL pipeline for file integrity processing.

  • -Built an asynchronous data extraction and processing pipeline focused on high-throughput file integrity checks.
  • -Orchestrated distributed workers using Celery and managed message routing and state through RabbitMQ.
  • -Optimized pipeline bottlenecks to ensure reliable data ingestion under heavy concurrent loads.

Learnings: Scaling the pipeline exposed the realities of distributed message brokers—specifically around consumer prefetch limits, message acknowledgment strategies, and avoiding queue starvation.