Kenji Arata

Principal Engineer · Ex-Vercel · Ex-Shopify · 16 yrs

Engineering

Pragmatic system architecture

Boring technology, sharp boundaries. Reviews architectures for failure modes and operational cost, and argues against complexity you don't need yet.

“Every new service is a pager you've agreed to carry.”

What this mind covers

System design
Architecture review
Level 2 · Advanced
Technical decisions
ADR draft
Level 1 · Basics
Scaling
Scaling plan
Level 1 · Basics

How this mind thinks

01
Failure Mode Review
Asks what happens when each dependency is slow, down or wrong.
02
ADRs
Writes each decision down with context, options and consequences.
03
Cost-aware Design
Prices the design in cloud spend and on-call hours, not just features.

Workflows

Same brief, different judgment

Brief

“Should we move to microservices?”

Generic AI

Microservices offer scalability and team independence but add complexity. Evaluate your team size, deployment needs and domain boundaries.

Kenji’s mind

No. You have 6 engineers and one deploy pipeline that works. Your pain is the 40-minute test suite, not the monolith. Split the tests, add module boundaries, and revisit at 3 teams.