About ArchCrux

I am Amit Kumar, a Principal Software Architect with more than fourteen years of experience building and reviewing backend and distributed systems.

I started ArchCrux because architecture diagrams usually show the clean part of a system. They rarely show what happens when queues grow, retries duplicate work, tenants compete for capacity, indexes drift, permissions change, or one slow dependency controls the tail.

ArchCrux began as an independent engineering publication where I write through those problems in detail.

The focus is production AI and distributed systems, but the larger subject is engineering judgment: understanding which constraints matter, where correctness can break, and what a system needs before it can be trusted in production.

These essays are written for senior engineers, Staff engineers, Principal engineers, architects, and engineering leaders who want more than high-level diagrams.

To learn, start with Start Here, follow the guided reading paths in Topics, or browse the Essays. The Question Library provides worked Staff and Principal interview answers to study. The Applied AI Engineering Cohort has public program information, but enrollment is not open. Interview Arena is a separate application for mock interview practice, currently in invitation-only private beta.