Fourteen years architecting backends across healthcare, fintech, media, and edtech — HIPAA patient portals, an investing platform, real-time community feeds. The language matters less than I used to think (Python, Node, Go, whatever the job wants); the judgment matters more — where the connection pool gives out, which async boundary leaks, what a bad abstraction costs three years on. Most of the real work is there. Lately it’s gone into AI-in-the-loop systems: keeping LLMs grounded, RAG th