Project - Scaling a Fast-Growing E-Commerce Platform

Overview

TopGeschenken is a rapidly growing scale-up behind three consumer-facing platforms: Topgeschenken.nl, Toptaarten.nl, and Topbloemen.nl. The company was investing heavily in building a future-proof website capable of handling continued growth.

Beyond developing new features, my role focused on analyzing existing processes, diagnosing performance issues, and contributing to the technical roadmap — working closely with the ICT architect.

Key Contributions

Performance Analysis & Technical Planning

I brought experience from high-traffic applications to systematically analyze the platform's bottlenecks and plan improvements:

• Requirements Gathering: Defined clear technical requirements for current and future scalability needs.
• Bottleneck Analysis: Identified critical performance bottlenecks in the existing architecture through profiling and load analysis.
• Flowcharts & Documentation: Created process flowcharts to map data flows and pinpoint inefficiencies.
• Stakeholder Feedback: Gathered input from colleagues across teams to ensure the technical roadmap addressed real operational pain points.

Scalability Architecture

Leveraging my experience with caching and message queuing, I helped plan and implement improvements using:

• Redis for multi-layer caching strategies to reduce database load and improve response times.
• RabbitMQ for asynchronous processing of order workflows and third-party integrations.
• Solr for fast, faceted product search across the catalog.

Feature Development

Alongside the architectural work, I contributed to ongoing feature development using the Symfony framework and API Platform, ensuring new functionality was built on solid, scalable foundations.