Arpan
Khan.
Partner. Engineer. Builder.
Building products that solve real problems through software, systems, and thoughtful engineering — from distributed backends to the businesses they power.
I've always been more curious about how things work than what they claim to do. That curiosity is what pulled me from writing my first scripts into architecting systems, and eventually into starting a company around them.
As Partner & COO of Garibzz, I spend my days moving between two worlds — the engineering room, where I design backends that need to hold up under real load, and the operating room, where I make the calls that keep a startup moving. Neither comes with a manual, which is exactly why I like it.
I care about systems that don't break quietly — caching layers that fail gracefully, queues that never lose a job, authentication that doesn't cut corners. Good engineering, to me, is invisible: the user just sees a product that works.
I'm still learning, deliberately and constantly — new architectures, new failure modes, new ways AI changes what a small team can build. I write about most of it, because the fastest way to actually understand something is to try to explain it clearly.
"People may never know my name.— On why I build
They don't have to.
If the code I leave behind continues to help someone,
that's enough."
Selected work — products and systems built end to end.
A mix of production startups, system-design explorations, and applied AI — each one chosen to solve a real, specific problem.
Garibzz
A modern multi-vendor ecommerce platform built to handle real transactions, real vendors, and real scale — from checkout to fulfillment.
Challenge
Support many independent vendors on one platform without a single vendor's traffic or errors taking the whole system down, while keeping checkout fast and payments reliable.
Architecture
Service-oriented Node.js backend, Redis for session and catalog caching, BullMQ-driven job queues for order processing and notifications, all containerized with Docker.
Results
A stable multi-vendor checkout flow with Cashfree payment integration, background order processing that survives spikes, and a catalog that stays fast under load.
Lessons learned
Queues turn unpredictable traffic into predictable work. Caching is a product decision as much as a technical one — it changes what "fast" feels like to a vendor.
Open Source SaaS Platform
A self-hostable SaaS starter exploring multi-tenant architecture — isolated tenant data, role-based access, and a billing layer designed to be forked and extended, not just demoed.
AI Projects & Tooling
A set of applied AI experiments — LLM-backed internal tools, prompt pipelines built on OpenRouter and Ollama, and computer vision utilities built to solve narrow, real problems well.
How it's built — the systems behind the products.
Engineering is the actual product. These are the pieces I reach for most, and how they fit together under real traffic.
Authentication
Session and token-based auth, built with clear failure modes and no shortcuts on token handling.
Distributed Systems
Services that stay correct and available when a dependency slows down or fails outright.
Caching & Redis
Redis for hot-path reads, rate limiting, and session storage — cache invalidation as a first-class concern.
Docker
Every service containerized for reproducible builds, from a laptop to a production cluster.
Queues & BullMQ
Background jobs for anything that doesn't need to happen in the request-response cycle.
Scalability & Performance
Designing for the traffic pattern a system will actually see, not a hypothetical worst case.
System & API Design
Clear boundaries between services, and APIs designed to be predictable before they're documented.
Cloud & AI Integration
Shipping to Vercel, Render and Cloudflare, with LLMs wired in where they genuinely help the product.
Writing — notes from building things.
Long-form notes on the systems I work with, written to make sense of them for myself first.
How Google Maps Detects Traffic
Breaking down the anonymized-signal architecture behind real-time traffic — and what it teaches about designing with imperfect data.
InfrastructureRedis, Explained Properly
Not just "it's a cache" — where Redis actually earns its place in an architecture, and where it quietly becomes a liability.
SecurityAuthentication, Deep Dive
Sessions vs. tokens, refresh flows, and the small decisions in auth that determine whether a breach is minor or catastrophic.
System DesignSystem Design Notes
A running set of notes on the tradeoffs behind consistency, availability, and partition tolerance — with real examples, not just theory.
DevOpsDocker in Production
What actually changes when a container leaves your laptop — image size, health checks, and the failure modes nobody warns you about.
Partner NotesBuilding Garibzz
An honest account of building a multi-vendor platform from zero — the architecture decisions I'd repeat, and the ones I wouldn't.
Toolkit — what I build with.
The tools I reach for by default, grouped by where they sit in a product.
Backend
Frontend
DevOps
AI
Business
Timeline — the path so far.
Engineering milestones, learning milestones, and the moments that turned into Garibzz.
Partner & COO, Garibzz
Running engineering and operations for a multi-vendor ecommerce platform — from system architecture to the day-to-day decisions that keep a startup moving.
Went deep on system design
Moved from building features to designing systems — queues, caching layers, and services built to survive real, unpredictable traffic.
Started building with LLMs
Began integrating language models into real products and internal tools, treating prompt design and evaluation as an engineering discipline.
Freelance Developer & Consultant
Working with clients to build custom web applications, robust backend architectures, and AI integrations. Taking ideas from concept to production-ready software.
Learned to build, then to ship
Full stack fundamentals first — then the harder lesson: how to take something from a local script to a product someone else depends on.
Let's build
something.
Open to conversations about engineering, products, and interesting problems worth solving.
hello@arpankhan.online