David Martin

Backend & Platform Engineer

I build operational software, developer infrastructure, and scalable backend systems using TypeScript, Postgres, Docker, and cloud platforms.

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David Martin
Positioning

Systems thinking from customer success to production engineering

I'm a backend and platform engineer who cares about how software runs in production, not just how it looks in a demo. Before building my own systems, I spent years in customer-facing roles helping teams fix real deployment and infrastructure problems when software was already live.

Customer Success Manager at Vercel

As a CSM, I partnered with customers on deployment issues: failed builds, routing, DNS, environment variables, edge configuration, and production incidents.

Production debugging

Experience tracing failures across DNS, routing, build output, auth flows, and third-party integrations when systems behave differently in prod than locally.

Observability & telemetry

Focused on backend architecture, metrics, health checks, and tooling that gives operators visibility into what's actually happening under load.

Beyond the UI layer

I design for data models, query patterns, caching, proxies, and deployment topology: the layers that determine whether a system stays reliable as usage grows.

New on YouTube

Building in public on DJM Tech

I started a YouTube channel to share the real engineering behind my projects: Docker ops, Astro builds, observability, and the mistakes that don't make it into blog posts.

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Featured work

Systems I've built and operated

Backend services, observability tooling, edge pipelines, and infrastructure experiments, focused on how they behave under real operational load.

Sentinel

In progress

Observability dashboard for infrastructure health, uptime, telemetry, and operational metrics, built with Next.js, Postgres, Prisma, and TypeScript.

  • Query optimization
  • Scaling under load
  • Backend aggregation
  • Operational visibility
Next.jsPostgreSQLPrismaTypeScript
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Rendorix

AWS-powered image optimization and transformation pipeline using CloudFront, Lambda, Sharp, Terraform, and S3. Rendorix actively powers the image delivery pipeline for this site’s homepage and blog assets, handling production image transformation, caching, and optimization at the edge.

  • CDN architecture
  • Signed URLs
  • Edge caching
  • Serverless image processing
AWSCloudFrontLambdaTerraformSharp
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LocalWatch

In progress

Privacy-first desktop app (Electron + Next.js) that captures packets via tshark, aggregates metrics in real time, and streams operational snapshots to a local dashboard.

  • Event pipelines
  • Throughput monitoring
  • Packet aggregation
  • Real-time telemetry
TypeScriptElectrontsharkWebSocket
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HTTP Edge Cache (lab)

A small HTTP caching edge in front of a GitHub API origin, with a React UI for public profile lookup. Experiments with cache hits, TTL, and stale-while-refresh using in-memory edge cache.

  • In-memory edge caching
  • Stale-while-refresh
  • Edge/origin proxy architecture
  • GitHub API integration
Node.jsDockerReactHTTP
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Self-hosted

Infrastructure Lab

I run a personal VPS as a production-style lab: Apache in front, Docker Compose behind it, and mostly TypeScript services I deploy and maintain myself.

Ubuntu VPSApache reverse proxiesDocker ComposeCloudflareTLS / SSLPostgreSQLTypeScript servicesDeployment pipelines

VPS dashboard

I keep a simple index at djm-apps.com so visitors can open what is running on the server without guessing hostnames.

  • Entry point for self-hosted lab projects
  • Links to platform apps running on the VPS
  • A place to browse experiments as they ship
Open VPS Dashboard
Technical writing

Notes from building real systems

Case studies and deep dives on scaling, observability, caching, and the operational lessons that don't show up in tutorials.

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