Harsh Makwana

Backend Engineer · Systems Architecture · AI-Augmented Development

Building infrastructure that makes ambitious products possible.

About

I'm Harsh — a backend engineer with 6+ years of experience shipping production systems that run at scale. I work mostly in the infrastructure layer: distributed architectures, event-driven pipelines, microservice orchestration, and cloud systems that need to stay reliable under real-world pressure.

My go-to stack is Node.js, NestJS, PostgreSQL, gRPC, RabbitMQ, Python, AWS, and Docker. A lot of my deeper work happens at the intersection of infrastructure and product — the kind of systems where latency, fault tolerance, and scale actually matter. One example: an on-demand game streaming platform I built that provisions GPU instances in under 60 seconds, manages FFmpeg/NVENC streaming pipelines in real time, and handles instance lifecycle entirely through event-driven automation.

How I use AI

I treat AI as a collaborator, not a shortcut. I use it for architectural exploration, thinking through tradeoffs, rapid prototyping, and debugging complex system behavior — the parts of engineering where a second perspective actually moves things forward. It's changed how fast I can go from a rough idea to something working, without cutting corners on how it's built.

Currently at Simform Solutions, where I lead backend platform architecture and mentor engineers on distributed system design. Outside of that, I build open-source tooling for the NestJS ecosystem — frameworks and integrations I created because I needed them and they didn't exist in a form I was happy with.

Projects

On-Demand GPU Game Streaming

Python · FastAPI · FFmpeg NVENC · Amazon IVS · RabbitMQ · AWS EC2

End-to-end game streaming platform for Unreal Engine games with under 60-second GPU provisioning. Built a custom FastAPI service to orchestrate FFmpeg NVENC pipelines — capturing video and audio via Xorg dummy driver and PulseAudio, streaming to Amazon IVS. Designed the EC2 orchestrator with multi-AZ failover, AMI-based bootstrapping, and event-driven instance lifecycle automation via RabbitMQ. Self-healing, observable, and cost-optimized.

Authority Delegation Management — Microservices Platform

NestJS · gRPC · Temporal.io · PostgreSQL · Microservices

Architected a microservices-based authority delegation system from scratch — repo structure, folder conventions, and service boundaries designed upfront. Built the gRPC infrastructure layer across all services and designed Temporal workflows per service for automated retries, timeouts, and long-running job reliability. Developed APIs, background jobs, and complex database queries using AI-augmented development throughout. Consolidated repetitive patterns into independent shared modules that work as drop-in extensions across services. Led a team session introducing Temporal, mentored on workflow design principles, and ran reviews on AI usage and prompting fundamentals to raise the team's baseline.

Open Source

nestjs-grpc

NestJS, TypeScript, gRPC

Type-safe gRPC framework for NestJS microservices with automatic code generation.

@hmake98/nest-mcp

NestJS, MCP, TypeScript

MCP (Model Context Protocol) integration for NestJS applications.

nestjs-temporal-core

NestJS, Temporal, Workflows

Core bindings for Temporal.io workflow orchestration in NestJS.

nestjs-starter

NestJS, Starter Template, MCP

Production-ready NestJS starter with MCP integration and best practices.

nestjs-microservices

NestJS, Microservices, Architecture

Reference implementation of distributed microservices architecture with NestJS.

Misc

Terrace Gardening

I grow vegetables, herbs, and flowering plants on my terrace. It's a good way to disconnect — tending to something slow and physical after days spent designing systems that move fast. Turns out nurturing living things is surprisingly calming.

Travelling

I travel when I can — mostly to places that feel unfamiliar. New environments shift how I think, and some of my clearest ideas about system design have come while I was somewhere completely different from a screen.

© 2026 Harsh Makwana