N.BANZON_JR
approach work services systems pipelines skills experience contact
available · open to remote roles

Norman P. Banzon Jr._

Backend engineer focused on microservices and system-wide architecture. I build the data pipelines that move information between services.

Most of that work has been deep integration with third-party systems in real estate and the Samsung ecosystem, where the job is keeping end-to-end synchronization stable long after launch.

live surfaceok
9
integrated platforms
10yrs
shipping backends
vertex ai rerank · gemini embeddings
yardi · entrata · sturent · student suite
algolia → elasticsearch + tencent es
krakend gateway · nestjs · k8s
NESTJSgRPCKUBERNETESELASTICSEARCHTENCENT ESREDIS BULLMONGODBBIGQUERYKRAKENDAZURE DEVOPSAWS LAMBDACLOUDFLAREDATAFORMAUTH0DOCKER NESTJSgRPCKUBERNETESELASTICSEARCHTENCENT ESREDIS BULLMONGODBBIGQUERYKRAKENDAZURE DEVOPSAWS LAMBDACLOUDFLAREDATAFORMAUTH0DOCKER
01 — how i work
understand → plan → implement

I learn the system before I change it.

Most production incidents don't come from hard problems — they come from a change made without understanding what depended on the thing being changed. So my first contribution to a team is usually not code. It's reading the architecture and the business model behind it, until I can predict what a change will touch before I make it.

01 architecture and business first

Understand the whole system, and why the business needs it that way

Before touching code or shipping an update, I map how the system fits together and what the company actually sells. That context is what stops a reasonable-looking change from breaking something upstream. The logic still gets applied properly — but inside the standards the application already follows, not alongside them.

02 deployment and scaling

Learn the existing deployment before suggesting a better one

I find out which cloud, which pipeline and which scaling model a team already runs before proposing enhancements. In an established company those choices are usually well made and well reasoned — very different from a startup or a legacy system. Recommendations should improve what exists, not restart it.

03 where the code belongs

Every integration gets traced before it gets written

For a new integration or feature, I dig into how the pieces already connect and decide deliberately where the logic should live. That planning step is what keeps a codebase readable as it grows. I've seen new modules bolted on against the existing conventions, and the result is spaghetti that the next person has to work around instead of build on.

04 ai with human judgement

AI is a fast contributor, not the reviewer

I use AI in the workflow, and I make sure it's given the whole system flow and the project's code standards before it writes anything — an agent working blind produces code that compiles and still doesn't belong. Human judgement stays in the loop on every change. Nothing ships because a model was confident about it.

02 — selected work
3 case studies
case 01·ai / vector search·vivacity app

Retrieve, rerank, reason — an AI agent grounded in property data

Property data, room prices and organization FAQs sync to Elasticsearch daily as dense vectors from Gemini text embedding. A user message hits vector search, the Vertex AI reranker reorders the candidates, and Google Vertex AI reasons over what's left.

vector embeddings gemini embeddings elasticsearch vertex ai · azure openai
read case study →
retrieve → rerank → reason
property faqs vectorindex rerank vertex ai
case 02·api gateway·vivacity app

A custom KrakenD gateway that replaced a metered vendor

Replaced a quota-priced managed gateway with a custom edge built on KrakenD open source, so every new integration is a config change rather than another line on the Azure bill.

krakend nestjs kubernetes azure devops
read case study →
edge → gateway → services
apps KrakenDgateway search property enquiry
case 03·search infrastructure·vivacity app

Migrating search off Algolia, onto Elasticsearch and Tencent ES

Moved search off Algolia onto Elasticsearch and Tencent ES, split by region so global and China Mini Program users each query a cluster near them. Relevance now lives in search templates that can be tuned without a deploy, with highlight queries backing autocomplete.

elasticsearch tencent es search templates mini programs
read case study →
dual-region index
ingest pipeline indextemplates ES T-ES globalchina
accenture · samsung

SAP Hybris ↔ vendor integrations

Implemented API integrations between SAP Hybris and third-party vendors, including authentication, data mapping, and other business logic. Collaborating with QA and other teams to meet deadlines.

personal project

Bayanihan — web 3D game

A browser-based 3D game built with three.js.

bayanihan-web.vercel.app ↗
03 — microservice topology
nestjs · rest + grpc

Three services, one contract, two stores

Each service owns one responsibility and talks to the others over REST and gRPC. Organization settings go to KV; property data goes to Elasticsearch twice — once for search, once as embeddings for the AI agent.

SOURCES NESTJS SERVICES DATA STORES CONSUMERS property platforms enquiry services org configuration A · synchronizationnormalize + upsert B · schedulerdaily + on-demand runs C · integrationsper-vendor adapters KV storeorg settings ES · property indexsearch + info ES · embeddingsdense vectors search + index templates web + app AI agent grpc
service a
Synchronization
Owns the sync itself: pull from each platform, normalize into the internal shape, upsert into the property index and write the embedding vectors alongside it.
service b
Scheduler
Owns when things run. Daily syncs, retries and on-demand runs are triggered here rather than scattered across the services doing the work.
service c
Integrations
Owns the outside world: one adapter per vendor for enquiry and property platforms, and organization settings pushed to the KV store.
organization settings
Pushed to a KV store, read hot on every request
property data
One ES index for search and property information
index shape & relevance
Index templates for mappings, search templates for queries
04 — systems i've analyzed and built
click a system
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read first

Before writing code I map the data, the contracts, and the failure points. Most integration bugs are mapping bugs, not code bugs.

make it configurable

Mappings, search templates and prompts live as configuration, so tuning behaviour doesn't require a deployment.

watch it in production

Health checks, alerting and metrics ship with the feature — Sentry, AWS metrics, SES, and server alerts I'm on the hook for.

05 — kubernetes & deployment pipelines
step through it
commit → azure pipeline → kube pods
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day-to-day ops
Kube pods, port forwarding, kubectl
automation
GitHub Actions → AWS Lambda deploys
edge
Cloudflare, DigitalOcean, Tencent SCF
observability
Sentry SDK, AWS metrics, SES alerts
06 — skills
core · working · familiar

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07 — experience
2016 — present
May 2025 – Present
Backend Engineer
Vivacity App
London, UK
Property Management Integration — Implement data integration pipelines that absorb and synchronize property information from multiple student accommodation platforms, including Yardi, Entrata, Sturent, Student Suite.
Enquiry Integrations — Implement and Manage enquiry integrations to services such as Hubspot, Servicenow, Unilodge Application, Entrata, Wechat Notification. Configure/Create Mappings for configurable data synchronization.
Search Infrastructure Migration — Upgrade the search infrastructure by migrating from Algolia to Elasticsearch and Tencent ES. This improves the search performance for Global and China users using our Mini Programs, improves Search Result by using search templates that can be optimized dynamically without deploying changes, and uses ES highlights query template for autocomplete for our mini app search specific reasons.
AI Search Agent — Implement Vector Search Embedding, Embed the ingest data using different AI models and sync to ES, Configure Prompt and AI response to handle related Property information queries, FAQ's, Room Prices Etc.
Krakend Api Gateway — Built a custom API gateway based on KrakenD open source to streamline integrations, This also helps prevent us from paying more from Azure API gateway with quota limit.
Day to Day Operations — such as Implement Nestjs modules, Rest and GRPC communications, redis bull queues, fix BigQuery SQL queries and dataform releases for reporting. Mongodb and Kubernetes operations, Cloudflare, fix system server alerts and collaborate with the team.
May 2019 – May 2025
Senior Analyst to Team Lead
Accenture
Philippines
Flask Application Serverless — Configure/Deploy Flask Application to Staging and Production Environment, uses AWS services such as lambda, route 53, API Gateway, GitHub Action to Automate the Deployment process into AWS Lambda functions.
Samsung Vendors integration — Implemented API Integrations between SAP Hybris and third-party vendors, includes Implementing authentication, data mapping, and other business logic. Collaborating with QA and other teams to meet deadlines.
Health Check Monitoring — Implement health monitoring and alerting, utilizing AWS Metrics, Lambda invocations/errors, Sentry SDK and AWS SES
Android Samsung App — Analyze the feasibility of the requirements. evaluates the availability and accessibility of data through various Samsung Ecommerce API, Collaborate and Implement features requested by the business.
August 2016 – May 2019
Software Engineer
Revolution of Kitten INC.
Cebu, Philippines
Implement QI Messaging websocket communication between Pepper Robot and Raspberry Pi
Implement Python Gattool script to gather and convert Nissei Thermometer BLE packets data to readable temperature data
Implement POS Printer Integration
Developed React Native Application for patient temperature data.
2011 – 2016
BS Computer Engineering
WLC, Ormoc City
Computer Systems Developer of the Year (2016)
08 — contact

Open to remote backend roles, wherever the team is.

Based in Ormoc City, Philippines (UTC+8), already working with a London team. Happy to talk architecture, integrations, or a specific problem you're stuck on.

project bayanihan-web ↗ resume Download PDF ↓
© 2026 Norman P. Banzon Jr. back to top ↑