--- title: "Backend / Systems Engineer — Shivanshu Tiwari" description: "Concurrency-safe payment engines, real-time dispatch with distributed locking, event-driven infra — proven with real tests, not assertions." canonical: "https://shivanshutiwari.in/backend-systems" lastUpdated: "2026-09-02" --- # Backend / Systems Engineer — Shivanshu Tiwari I build backend systems that don't lose data under load Concurrency-safe payment engines, real-time dispatch with distributed locking, event-driven infra — proven with real tests, not assertions. ## About I build backend systems that are designed to survive production — payment pipelines with proven race-condition safety, real-time dispatch infrastructure with distributed locking, and event-driven architectures that process work without data loss. I'm a third-year B.Tech CS & IT student in Bhopal, and over the past year I've built prototypes that scaled to real debugging cycles: a Kotlin MFSK audio engine, a Django payout ledger with immutable audit trails, and a real-time home services platform with Socket.io live tracking. When something breaks — a 5-commit Railway crash loop, a database connection pool exhausting under load — I keep the debugging history and write it up. That's the standard: not that it never breaks, but that I know exactly why and how it broke. ## Projects - [DAITFO — RL Traffic Signal Control Benchmark](https://shivanshutiwari.in/projects/daitfo): A custom Gymnasium environment wrapping SUMO that benchmarks a PPO agent against fixed-time and queue-based heuristic controllers across 27 controlled runs. The heuristic won every metric — and that honest negative result is the actual finding, not a failure. - [Samvad — AI Meeting Assistant](https://shivanshutiwari.in/projects/samvad): Records in-person meetings, transcribes them live, and turns them into assigned, emailed tasks — without anyone taking notes. - [Agentic Honeypot — AI Scam-Baiting System](https://shivanshutiwari.in/projects/agentic-honey-pot): An AI agent that poses as a confused elderly retiree, engages real scammers in live conversation, and extracts UPI IDs, bank accounts, and phishing links from their own messages — turning reactive defense into active intelligence gathering. - [AI Email Categorization Agent](https://shivanshutiwari.in/projects/email-categorization-agent): Local-first inbox automation agent — reads Gmail via OAuth2, semantically classifies every email into custom labels using an LLM, applies them automatically, and runs on a schedule with zero manual input. Skips already-labeled threads to avoid redundant processing. - [EchoPay — Audio-Powered Offline Payment System](https://shivanshutiwari.in/projects/echopay): I built an offline P2P payment system that encodes transaction data as audio tones between phones (MFSK modulation) — no internet required — with a hybrid UDP fallback and an offline-first Room sync queue. - [Home Services App](https://shivanshutiwari.in/projects/home-services-app): Emergency home services platform for Indian housing societies — three clients (Android, admin dashboard, API) sharing one REST API with role-based middleware, real-time tracking, and Razorpay payments. - [PayoutEngine — Concurrency-Safe Payout System](https://shivanshutiwari.in/projects/payout-engine): Prevents double-spending when two payout requests hit the same merchant balance at the same instant — verified with real threading tests, not mocks. - [TakeALift — Carpooling & P2P Vehicle Rental](https://shivanshutiwari.in/projects/takealift): I built a carpooling and P2P vehicle rental platform with real-time driver dispatch — Redis GEO proximity search, distributed locking to prevent double-dispatch, a NATS event bus, and full AWS infrastructure-as-code across native Android, Flutter, and a TypeScript backend. - [UIDAI Aadhaar Data Analysis Pipeline](https://shivanshutiwari.in/projects/uidai-aadhaar-analysis): I cleaned and analyzed 4.4M Aadhaar enrollment records — removed 602K duplicates, standardized 65 state-name variants down to 38 — and served the results through a 14-endpoint Flask API. - [Multilingual Mandi Platform](https://shivanshutiwari.in/projects/multilingual-mandi-platform): I built a real-time marketplace connecting local vendors across language barriers, with a provider-chain translation fallback (Google → Microsoft → AWS → mock) and Redis-backed WebSocket negotiation. - [PartyInvite AI — Bulk Invitation Generator](https://shivanshutiwari.in/projects/party-invite-ai): I built a bulk party invitation generator — a CSV guest list goes in, personalized cards come out, delivered via email and WhatsApp through a Celery queue. - [CyberMentor — AI Cybersecurity Companion](https://shivanshutiwari.in/projects/cyber-mentor): I built an AI cybersecurity companion for students — it scans suspicious links/emails and teaches through a teach-back quiz. - [MailAgents — Local Email Classifier](https://shivanshutiwari.in/projects/mail-agents): I built a local tool that reads my Gmail, categorizes emails by sender with a local/cloud LLM, and auto-applies nested labels. - [Margdarshak — Bilingual Career Guidance App](https://shivanshutiwari.in/projects/margdarshak): I built a bilingual (Hindi/English) career guidance Android app with a 4-service Node.js backend for Smart India Hackathon. - [ComplianceIQ — AI Policy Compliance Scanner](https://shivanshutiwari.in/projects/compliance-iq): I built a tool where you upload a policy PDF, AI extracts the enforceable rules, and a rule engine scans live data for violations with human-in-the-loop review. - [CEP-IITB — IIT Bombay Continuing Education](https://shivanshutiwari.in/projects/cep-iitb): I built an Android companion app for IIT Bombay's Continuing Education office — browse courses, view certificates, find contacts. --- *Source: https://shivanshutiwari.in/backend-systems*