alexis-segura.com
notes on software, systems & practice

§ about

About

My name is Alexis SEGURA. I’m 28, and I currently hold the position of Backend & Cloud Architect at a fintech. Together with the teams, I design and operate a microservices system in an event-driven architecture deployed on AWS, handling more than 100 million euros in assets under management.

My approach

I approach my work with the intention of building the best product, in the best way. The best product is the one that addresses the company’s challenges and its customers’ expectations. The best way is to implement it with the highest possible quality given the company’s constraints.

My approach to software architecture is a hands-on one. I like being in the code, in production, as close as possible to the teams and stakeholders, including decision-makers. I enjoy building open systems, ones that create opportunities for the company rather than closing them off. I push for simplicity and restraint to preserve that openness, with clear governance and no technical overhead that would needlessly slow down the product’s development.

Finally, I hold personal, critical and independent thinking as a requirement; this blog is a trace of that. These are habits I try to keep alive with the teams. A large part of the work of architecture is knowing how to question what seems obvious.

A line from Gregor Hohpe sums up a course I try to hold:

“Architects aren’t the smartest people on the team, they are the ones making everyone else smarter.”

My background

I’ve worked in startups for seven years, five of them in the fintech where I am today. Over those years, I moved from Backend Developer up to the role of Backend & Cloud Architect. I’m responsible for 40+ microservices in production on AWS cloud infrastructure, in a system that processes several million Kafka events per day.

I’ve led up to 15 backend engineers across four teams, taking part in both scale-up and scale-down strategies.

A growing part of my work is moving toward integrating AI into production, in customer-facing products and at every level of the organization.

During my studies, I graduated top of my class and received an excellence scholarship funded by Meta.

What I write here

  1. Articles on software architecture and development, in particular around distributed systems and the integration of AI into production.
  2. Technical notes, the product of debugging sessions and code reading (frameworks, libraries, databases). A trace of what I’m learning.
  3. Billets, thoughts of the moment, with no claim to truth. A way of thinking out loud about the craft.
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Experience

  1. apr 2021 — apr 2026
    Vancelian (ex akt.io)
    Nice / Sophia Antipolis, France
    1. Back-End Architect
      jun 2022 — apr 2026
      Java / Spring Boot · Apache Kafka · Event-Driven Architecture · Kubernetes · AWS · MongoDB · Keycloak · AI Agents / MCP

      Responsible for the back-end and cloud architecture of an innovative financial services platform (investment, cryptocurrencies, DeFi), from architecture decisions to production operations.

      • Built the distributed system (Event-Driven architecture, Apache Kafka) from a legacy monolithic codebase, now processing several million events per day.
      • Designed and operated 40+ Java / Spring Boot microservices in production, highly available, resilient and scalable, deployed on Kubernetes and AWS cloud infrastructure, for a financial platform managing over €100M in assets.
      • Technical leadership of up to 15 back-end engineers across 4 teams, driving both scale-up and scale-down phases of the organization (x10).
      • Defined software quality standards and architecture governance: code reviews, testing, observability, SBOM, CI/CD and monitoring.
      • Owned cross-functional technical and product decisions to ensure the platform's consistency, maintainability and scalability, working directly with the Compliance, Product and Operations teams.
      • Designed the shared technical foundation (around ten internal libraries covering development, security and testing) adopted across all teams.
      • Designed the authentication and authorization architecture around Keycloak, including custom extensions (SPI).
      • Designed and operated the MongoDB data layer: client-side field-level encryption (CSFLE) for regulatory requirements, time-series, collections with tens of millions of documents, Atlas Search and Vector Search (powering semantic search for AI agents).
      • Developed and shipped AI agents, including a financial-crime analysis agent, and built an MCP server and internal marketplace to embed AI into engineering workflows.
      • Led the technical community and ran internal talks to spread best practices.
    2. Lead Back-End Developer
      jul 2021 — jun 2022
      Java / Spring Boot · Apache Kafka · Event-Driven Architecture · Kubernetes · AWS · MongoDB · Keycloak
    3. Back-End Engineer / Architect
      apr 2021 — jul 2021
      Java / Spring Boot · Apache Kafka · Event-Driven Architecture · Kubernetes · AWS · MongoDB · Keycloak
  2. sep 2019 — apr 2021
    WeOpt
    Monaco
    1. Back-End Engineer / Architect
      sep 2020 — apr 2021
      Java · Spring · Kubernetes · AWS · Serverless · Kafka

      Back-end design and development for a social-network product built on Java / Spring microservices.

      • Deployed services on a Kubernetes cluster.
      • Worked on an AWS cloud infrastructure.
      • Built serverless functions.
      • Deployed an Apache Kafka cluster.
    2. Back-End Engineer / Architect (Apprenticeship)
      sep 2019 — sep 2020
      Java · Spring · Kubernetes · AWS · Serverless · Kafka

      Apprenticeship during the final year of engineering school; same scope as the role above.

      • Deployed services on a Kubernetes cluster.
      • Worked on an AWS cloud infrastructure.
      • Built serverless functions.
      • Deployed an Apache Kafka cluster.
  3. jun 2019 — aug 2019
    Université du Québec à Montréal
    Montréal, Canada
    1. Research Intern
      jun 2019 — aug 2019
      Java · Git internals

      Research on resolving composition conflicts in Git.

  4. jun 2018 — sep 2018
    Sopra Steria
    Sophia Antipolis, France
    1. Development Intern
      jun 2018 — sep 2018
      Java · Spring · Cucumber

      Built Java / Spring web services and automated non-regression testing with Cucumber on a nationwide social-protection project.

Education

  1. sep 2017 — jun 2020
    Engineering Degree, Computer Science
    Polytech Nice Sophia · Sophia Antipolis, France

    Specialization in Software Architecture. Graduated top of the class (major de promotion).

Awards

  1. jun 2021
    Build on Redis Hackathon — Silver Prize
    Redis

    Silver Prize for building a log ingestion and monitoring application on top of Redis. Team of four with Alexis Gardin, Florian Juroszek, and Jérémi Ferré.

  2. jun 2020
    Excellence Scholarship
    Meta (Facebook) & Université Nice Côte d'Azur

    Excellence scholarship awarded during studies at Polytech Nice Sophia.