ka Kurtis Assad
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Senior backend & infrastructure engineer

Backends that
stay up.

Kurtis
Assad

I design and run the backends that keep products online: Node.js microservices, Kubernetes on AWS, event-driven systems, and the CI/CD that ships them. Currently at CircleCI, supporting enterprise teams across JAPAC.

Tokyo, Japan · Open to new roles

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Currently @ CircleCI
Kurtis Assad
// based in Tokyo, Japan

about

Backend engineer who likes the parts nobody sees.

Six years shipping production systems. From a Series-A web3 startup where I owned backend architecture end to end, to a consulting shop building exchange infrastructure, to CircleCI where I help enterprise teams untangle their hardest CI/CD problems.

I care about event-driven design, observability, and infrastructure you don't have to think about: Terraform over click-ops, blue-green over downtime, OpenTelemetry over guesswork. I've built launchpads on Base, run Kubernetes in production, and mentored teams as they scaled.

experience

Where I've shipped.

Three teams, three stacks, one throughline: reliable systems and the infrastructure that runs them.

CircleCI

Nov 2025 - Present

Tokyo, Japan

Large CI/CD platform.

Senior Support Engineer

  • Provide technical support for CircleCI Server and Cloud customers across JAPAC, resolving complex CI/CD and infrastructure issues for enterprise clients.
  • Operate production Kubernetes clusters on AWS, supporting self-hosted deployments and container workloads via Docker.
  • Diagnose deep technical issues across GitHub Checks race conditions, Docker Layer Caching, and IAM policy migrations.
  • Author and iterate on customer-facing technical communications in English and Japanese.
KubernetesAWSDockerCI/CDGo日本語

Commonwealth Labs

Dec 2022 - Nov 2025

Tokyo, Japan

Series-A startup building a web3 governance & community platform.

Senior Backend Engineer

  • Owned backend architecture end to end: Node.js microservices over PostgreSQL, Redis, and RabbitMQ.
  • Designed an event-driven architecture for asynchronous workflows and inter-service communication.
  • Shipped a token launchpad (Solidity / ERC-20 on Base) and Uniswap swap integration.
  • Implemented Community Stake, a treasury/staking governance mechanism with stake-gated access.
  • Led system design, hiring & mentoring, and technical roadmap as a founding-team member working directly with founders.
  • Established CI, review standards, and infra (Terraform, blue-green Postgres upgrades) the team still uses, eliminating manual click-ops deploys.
  • Drove the observability buy-in, then implemented OpenTelemetry auto-instrumentation and Datadog dashboards.
Node.jsPostgreSQLRedisRabbitMQSolidityTerraform

CardinalChain

Apr 2019 - Dec 2022

Tokyo, Japan

Mid-sized consultancy building a web3 exchange.

Backend Engineer

  • Implemented backend features in Java / Spring Boot.
  • Optimized SQL queries via the query planner and improved data-access patterns.
  • Implemented Redis caching for high-frequency endpoints.
  • Built asynchronous APIs using RabbitMQ.
JavaSpring BootSQLRedisRabbitMQ

activity

Still shipping.

skills

The toolkit.

Languages

TypeScriptSolidityGoJavaSQL

Infra & Data

KubernetesAWSDockerPostgreSQLRedisRabbitMQNode.js microservicesEvent-driven architectureCI/CD

Leadership

System designFounding-team executionHiring & mentoringTechnical roadmapWorking with founders

education

Education.

B.Sc. in Computer Science

University of Toronto · Toronto, Japan

Sep 2015 - Apr 2019

contact

Let's build.

Open to backend & infrastructure roles in Tokyo and remote. The fastest way to reach me is email.

[email protected] GitHub
Kurtis Assad · Backend & infrastructure engineer