Foundations for the Next 10x with Firmpath
Building the performance, reliability, and agility for your next 10x
I work alongside teams to design and deliver high-performance platforms bringing proven accelerators and real-world experience so systems scale, stay resilient, and modernize without disruption. Here’s how I make that happen:
Scale with Confidence
Architect lean, high-performance systems that grow predictably without driving up latency or cost.
Where this helps
- During early-stage architecture or re-architecture of platforms expected to operate at scale.
- When existing systems show signs of stress under high concurrency or load.
- If you’re aiming to reduce latency or cost while maintaining throughput.
- When planning for seasonal or event-driven traffic spikes.
How is it done
- Workload modeling and concurrency profiling to simulate realistic load conditions.
- Detection and elimination of architectural and implementation-level anti-patterns.
- Full-stack tuning — from database queries and caches to queues, APIs, and infrastructure.
- Building a repeatable performance validation strategy; establish KPIs with automated test harnesses.
- Performance modeling to forecast system behavior under various usage patterns.
Engineered for Resilience
Build fault-tolerant, recoverable systems with reliability engineered into every layer.
Where this helps
- When frequent outages or degraded experiences are impacting reliability.
- At the start of a site reliability engineering (SRE) transformation.
- When establishing or refining SLOs, SLIs, and error budgets.
- Before launching mission-critical new services or high-visibility releases.
How is it done
- Defining and implementing SLIs and SLOs aligned to user-critical operations.
- Reliability modeling using failure injection, game days, and resilience testing.
- Designing for graceful degradation and implementing fallback strategies.
- Dependency graphing and blast radius containment techniques.
- Observability setup to detect regressions and automate alerting.
- Building reliability dashboards and integrating error budget tracking into development workflows.
Modernize & Build with Intent
Design cloud-native, modular platforms that cut complexity and accelerate delivery
Where this helps
- When launching a new platform that needs to be scalable, modular, and cloud-ready from day one.
- When legacy platforms slow down feature delivery or inflate infrastructure costs.
- At the start of a cloud migration or replatforming initiative.
- When facing high dependency risks, tech debt, or fragile integrations.
- During an org-wide push toward DevOps, automation, or microservices.
How is it done
- Platform architecture definition for new builds, balancing functional needs with performance, scalability, and operational resilience.
- Legacy dependency mapping and risk-weighted decomposition of services.
- Containerization & API-first design with clear modular boundaries.
- Strangler pattern adoption for safe, phased replatforming.
- Design & implementation of reconciliation mechanisms to ensure data integrity during transitions.
- Infrastructure modernization with Terraform, Kubernetes, and cloud-native services.
- Progressive delivery (canary, blue/green) to minimize production impact.
The Firmpath Framework
The Firmpath Framework is a structured methodology for building, modernizing, and operating digital platforms that are highly reliable, scalable, and performance-optimized. It draws from decades of hands-on experience with hyper-scale, low-latency systems, distilling lessons learned into practical techniques, patterns, and processes that engineering teams can immediately apply. Key dimensions of the Framework
- Core Knowledge Layer – “What to Do”. Provides the foundational knowledge and design guidance for high-performing platforms.
- Process & Engineering Layer – “How to Do It”. Translates patterns and knowledge into real-world engineering practices.
- Governance & Maturity Layer – “Are We Doing It Right?”. Ensures platforms meet reliability, scalability, and modernization goals while enabling continuous improvement.
Every platform has strengths and blind spots. Firmpath helps uncover both. Write to me on contact@firmpath.in, if you’d like to explore it further.
Engagement Model
1. Understand & Shape
We begin by deeply understanding your current landscape—technical architecture,team dynamics, and strategic goals. Together, we co-design the right engagement model, whether it’s immersive, full-time support or hourly precision-targeted interventions, ensuring alignment with your priorities and pace.
2. Execute
Hands-on execution with an outcome-focused approach. I work alongside your teams to implement solutions, address bottlenecks, and embed best practices directly into your systems.
3. Embed & Sustain
The impact doesn’t end with delivery. I ensure recommendations are anchored into your processes and culture, enabling long-term resilience, continuous improvement, and measurable value beyond the engagement
Ashutosh Shinde
I am an engineering leader with 20+ years’ experience specializing in building, scaling and modernizing high-performance platforms in the payments and financial services space.
Career Highlights
Strategic Engineering Leader | Hyper-scale Platforms @ Global Scale | Performance & Reliability Expert
- Visionary technologist with a proven track record leading global-scale platforms that process over 1 billion transactions daily, I bring deep expertise in building ultra-low-latency, highly resilient systems with zero tolerance for downtime.
- Spearheaded the modernisation of a decade old monolithic remittance platform processing millions of global transactions daily into cloud-native architectures, ensuring seamless global operations and minimal business disruption.
- As a strategic leader, I built and scaled a Global Engineering Center from ground zero to over 1,000 engineers, transforming it into the primary innovation hub for a top-tier global fintech. Under my leadership, the site was recognized as a ‘Great Place to Work’ for two consecutive years.
- Co-founded a performance engineering firm, building teams and solving complex scalability & reliability challenges across multiple domains and technology platforms.
- Holder of multiple industry Certifications and a Technology Patent, underscoring a commitment to innovation and engineering excellence.
- Visionary technologist with a proven track record leading global-scale platforms that process over 1 billion transactions daily, I bring deep expertise in building ultra-low-latency, highly resilient systems with zero tolerance for downtime.
- Spearheaded the modernisation of a decade old monolithic remittance platform processing millions of global transactions daily into cloud-native architectures, ensuring seamless global operations and minimal business disruption.
- As a strategic leader, I built and scaled a Global Engineering Center from ground zero to over 1,000 engineers, transforming it into the primary innovation hub for a top-tier global fintech. Under my leadership, the site was recognized as a ‘Great Place to Work’ for two consecutive years.
- Co-founded a performance engineering firm, building teams and solving complex scalability & reliability challenges across multiple domains and technology platforms.
- Holder of multiple industry Certifications and a Technology Patent, underscoring a commitment to innovation and engineering excellence.
Publications
- “Selecting Enterprise Applications for Performance Audit Using AHP” – CMG Journal
- “Challenges in Performance Monitoring of Hyper-connected IoT Systems” – IEEE IOTA
- “Measuring Workload Performance – Is the Infrastructure a Problem?” – CMG Measure IT Journal
- “Performance Review of COTS Based Systems” – CMG Journal
- “Challenges of Building High Performance On-Demand Applications” – IEEE COMPAC Conference, Finland
- “Addressing Challenges in Gathering Performance Requirements” – SET Lab Briefings (Infosys)
Certifications & Education
- AWS Certified Machine Learning Associate
- AWS Certified AI Practitioner
- AWS Certified Architect (Associate)
- TOGAF Certified Practitioner
- Gremlin Certified Chaos Engineering Professional
- Certified Blockchain Architect & Engineer
- Sun Certified Enterprise Architect
- Bachelor of Engineering (Mechanical Engineering) – Maharashtra Institute of Technology, Pune
- Post Graduate Diploma in Cyber Law & Forensics – National Law University, Bangalore
Let’s Build Your Next 10x
Let’s discuss how you can scale, stabilize, and speed up your platform.
Send me an email