About
About Me
I'm Corey Chen, a Go backend engineer in Singapore. For two years I built and ran microservices for a multi-tenant B2B platform — identity, segmentation, notifications, audit, and the Kafka and Temporal plumbing between them. Before that I interned on TikTok's storage infrastructure team.
How I Think
I care most about systems that stay correct when something fails: a consumer that sees the same message twice, a workflow that crashes halfway, a downstream call that times out. Most of my best work is making those cases boring.
I like to understand problems from the profiler and the data, not from guesses. The memory leak I'm proudest of fixing came down to a value-copied client, found by reading a heap profile.
Outside work I build with AI agents — my own trading-operations system runs Claude and Codex as reviewed research agents — and I write about engineering, markets and travel.
Working Principles
Systems Over Silos
I design services as part of a distributed whole, not isolated units. Every decision considers upstream and downstream impact.
Observable by Default
Tracing, metrics, and structured logging are not afterthoughts — they're core requirements from the first commit.
Ship, Then Iterate
I favour working software over perfect plans: get it running, measure it, then improve it.
AI-Augmented Craft
I leverage AI tools like Claude Code, Cursor, and Codex as force multipliers — not replacements for engineering judgment.
Skills Snapshot
Tools & Setup
Hardware
- MacBook Pro M3
- Mechanical keyboard
- Dual monitors
Software
- GoLand / VS Code
- iTerm2 + tmux
- Docker Desktop
- TablePlus
- Postman
Workflow
- Feature branches + code review
- GitLab CI
- AI-assisted development with Claude Code, Codex and Cursor
Get in Touch
Open to backend engineering roles in Singapore. The fastest way to reach me is email.
I write regularly at /blog.