Senior Software Architect · MBBS · MS Software Engineering · Brampton, ON ↔ Remote
Building systems that just work scale quietly.
Twenty years designing and shipping enterprise-grade cloud platforms on Azure, .NET and modern JavaScript. I write about the decisions behind the code — architecture, pragmatism, and the occasional post-mortem.
Azure · ★ · .NET 8 / Core · ★ · Microservices · ★ · Angular 17+ · ★ · React / Next.js · ★ · gRPC · ★ · Entity Framework · ★ · SQL Server · ★ · Blazor · ★ · Dynamics 365 · ★ · Twilio · ★ · DocuSign · ★ ·
01About
A pragmatist who ships.
20+
Years shipping
4
Countries shipped from
9
Microsoft & PMP certs
2
Disciplines: medicine + software
Dr. Arsalan Shahid — a software engineer with an MS in Software Engineering, specialising in enterprise back-end development with .NET Core, cloud architecture on Azure, and front-end engineering with modern JS frameworks.
I have spent over 20 years building distributed systems, designing microservice architectures, and mentoring engineering teams.
02The stack
Tools I reach for, daily.
Cloud
Azure-first
- App Services
- Azure Functions
- Azure SQL DB
- Azure DevOps
- Microsoft Graph
- Docker
Backend
.NET & C#
- .NET 8 / Core
- ASP.NET Core API
- Microservices
- gRPC, REST
- EF Core, LINQ
- Blazor
Frontend
Modern JS
- Angular 17+
- React / Next.js
- TypeScript
- RxJS
- SCSS / Bootstrap
- Razor MVC
Data
SQL Server
- T-SQL, 2000→2022
- Stored Procs, Views
- SSIS pipelines
- Query tuning
- Index strategy
- Migrations
Practice
Architecture
- Microservices
- SOLID, DI, Factory
- TDD
- OWASP security
- UML, DDD
- MVC / MVVM
Delivery
Agile lead
- PMP certified
- SCRUM ceremonies
- Azure Boards
- Git flow
- CI/CD pipelines
- Mentoring
Integrations
Plumbing
- SharePoint Online
- Microsoft 365 / Graph
- Power Platform
- DocuSign, Checkr
- Twilio
- Dynamics 365
+ a healthy suspicion of
Shiny things
- Premature micro-frontends
- Serverless-everything
- 10-layer abstractions
- Framework-of-the-month
- Meetings as a strategy
- "We'll refactor later"
03The journal
Notes on architecture, delivery, and the occasional 3 AM pager.
All
MicroServices
Cloud Storage
Blob Storage
Table Storage
MediatR
CQRS
001
Apr 14, 2026
A Comprehensive Architectural Analysis of MediatR + Vertical Slice CQRS in .NET 10 MediatR is not CQRS. Vertical Slice Architecture is not Clean Architecture. A comprehensive architectural analysis of how these three independent ideas combine in .NET 10 — with worked…
002
Mar 02, 2026
The Story of K-Nearest Neighbors: How Computers Learn from Their Neighbors The world of computers can be very difficult to understand because there are so many big words. One big word is machine learning. Machine learning is just a…
003
Oct 31, 2025
The Developer’s Docker Quick Reference: Running Backend Services in PowerShell Docker has become the standard for creating clean, isolated, and reproducible development environments. By containerizing services like databases and message brokers, you can spin up an entire application…
004
Oct 31, 2025
The Administrator’s Cookbook: A Definitive Guide to Running Backend Services with Docker and PowerShell I. Introduction: The Modern Developer’s Local Environment In modern software development, the phrase “it works on my machine” has become a notorious anti-pattern, signaling a critical divergence between…
005
Aug 23, 2025
An Architect’s Deep Dive into the Azure Storage Platform: Internals, Service Analysis, and Implementation Quick Review Programming Azure Blob Storage Demonstrates initializing a client, creating containers, and performing upload, list, download, and delete operations in Python and.NET.21 Programming Azure Files Shows how…
006
Aug 23, 2025
An Architectural Analysis of the Blazor “Auto” Render Mode Quick Review Introduction The journey of the Blazor framework has been one of refinement. It began with a clear choice between two distinct paths: Blazor Server and Blazor…
007
Aug 23, 2025
A Comprehensive Guide to Mastering Transact-SQL Quick Review: T-SQL Concepts at a Glance This summary provides a high-level overview of the key topics covered in the full article, perfect for a quick refresher. Part…
The best architecture is the one the team on call at 2 AM can still reason about.
05Say hello