Cloud & Infrastructure
Backend Migration & System Cleanup
Client name withheld under NDA · B2B SaaS backend
Overview
The engagement improved a production Node.js backend that lacked structured logging, reliable staging parity, and automated deployment with rollback.
System Architecture
GitHub
Push to main
CI Pipeline
Build + test + scan
Container Registry
ECR · Versioned images
Staging
Parity with prod
Production
ECS · Auto-scaling
CloudWatch
Structured logs
Alerts
Threshold-based
Health Checks
Every 30s
The Problem
Production deploys depended on manual SSH sessions, which made release and recovery slow and error-prone.
Logging was unstructured, which made incident investigation harder than it needed to be.
Staging did not match production closely enough to catch environment-specific failures.
On-call work lacked clear runbooks and fast rollback paths.
Technical Approach
Replaced unstructured logging with structured output
Log entries were standardized with severity, request context, and searchable fields.
Set up centralized aggregation and alerting
Logs and alerts were wired so on-call engineers receive actionable context rather than opaque failure pings.
Containerized the application
The same image path was used across environments to reduce parity drift.
Built a deployment pipeline with rollback
CI/CD covered build, test, staged promotion, and fast rollback for bad releases.
Added health checks and an incident runbook
Service health endpoints and written response procedures reduced dependence on tribal knowledge.
Tech Stack
runtime
containers
infrastructure
observability
cicd
Engagement Details
Timeline
Approximately 6 weeks (subject to verification)
Team
Senior Axionvex Tech engineer with client engineering counterparts
Outcomes
Design and control changes are listed below. Numeric claims stay unpublished until measurement is verified.
Release control
Design changeManual SSH deploy and recovery
Automated pipeline with staged promotion and rollback
Observability
Design changeUnstructured console logs
Structured logging, aggregation, and alert context
Measured production results
Pending verificationBaseline metrics not yet published
Numeric outcomes withheld pending verification
Architecture and operating controls are documented. MTTR, deploy-time, and morale claims remain pending verification.