Backend Systems
Designing scalable services, APIs, and production software.
Backend systems · Platform reliability
Hi, I'm
Robert Lech
Senior Software Engineer · Mathematician
I build backend platforms, developer workflows, and production systems with an emphasis on reliability, operability, and clear engineering tradeoffs.
Get to know me
About Me
I'm a Senior Software Engineer at Achievers based in Toronto, with over 10 years of experience across backend development, platform engineering, infrastructure automation, and developer tooling. Before joining Achievers, I spent more than nine years at Index Exchange, growing from an Operations Engineer into a Senior Software Engineer working on large-scale production systems.
With a background in Computer Science and Applied Mathematics, I enjoy solving complex technical problems, building reliable software, and continuously exploring new areas of engineering--from cloud infrastructure and distributed systems to AI-assisted development.
Role
Senior Software Engineer
Location
Toronto, ON
Experience
10 Years of Experience
Education
Applied Mathematics, Carleton University
Computer Science & Mathematics, University of Toronto
What I do
Expertise
Cloud & DevOps
Automating infrastructure, deployment, CI/CD, and operational workflows.
Platform Reliability
Building reliable systems with observability, alerts, SLO thinking, and operational discipline.
Developer Productivity
Improving engineering workflows through tooling, documentation, automation, and platform support.
What I work with
Skills & Tools
Backend
Infrastructure & DevOps
Data & Storage
Engineering Practices
My work
Featured Projects
Personal Cloud Migration
Moving a Containerized Flask App to AWS
Migrated a Dockerized Flask course enrollment app from local Docker Compose to a production-minded AWS deployment using ECS Fargate, ECR, ALB, MongoDB Atlas, SSM Parameter Store, CloudWatch, GitHub Actions OIDC, and AWS CDK.
PythonFlaskDockerAWSECS FargateCDKGitHub ActionsMongoDB
AI-Assisted Music Tooling
Piano Sheet Music Simplifier
AI-assisted Python pipeline that analyzes MusicXML, generates a structured simplification plan, validates it, rewrites the score deterministically, and renders beginner-friendly piano sheet music.
PythonMusicXMLAIOpenAImusic21automation
Professional Experience
Platform & Reliability Engineering
Backend and platform engineering experience focused on reliable services, infrastructure automation, observability, and developer productivity.
GoKubernetesBackend SystemsReliabilityDeveloper Productivity
No projects in this category yet.
Writing, math & personal
More Context
A few pieces that round out the professional story: writing, applied mathematics, and interests outside work.
Writing Moving a Containerized Flask App to AWS
A practical case study on moving a Dockerized Flask application from local Docker Compose to ECS Fargate, ECR, ALB, MongoDB Atlas, SSM Parameter Store, CloudWatch, GitHub Actions OIDC, and AWS CDK.
Read Article
Writing 10 Months of Growth
A retrospective on leaving Index Exchange, technical interviews, AI and cloud projects, and preparing for a new senior backend engineering chapter.
Read Article
Mathematics Applied Mathematics
Applied Mathematics at Carleton University, with research focused on recursions and recursively defined trees.
View Math Repo
Personal Outside of Work
Volleyball, piano, languages, board games, and Mahjong. A few threads outside software that keep the rest of the work human.
Training
Courses & Development
Professional Development
AWS Cloud Technical Essentials
CompletedCoursera Course
Cloud computing foundations, AWS services, security, networking, and deployment patterns used as the basis for the Flask-to-AWS migration project.
2026 View Certificate Course
Programming with Golang
CompletedCoursera Course
Go programming foundations, control flow, functions, data structures, and practical language patterns for building reliable backend services.
2026 View Certificate Course
Full Stack Web Development with Flask
CompletedLinkedIn Learning Course
Full-stack Flask application development, virtual environment setup, routing, templates, database integration, and practical Python web workflows.
2026 View Certificate Course
AI Agents and Agentic AI Architecture in Python
CompletedCoursera Course
Applied AI course work that informed the Piano Sheet Music Simplifier pipeline and its structured planning, validation, and deterministic rewrite flow.
2025 View Certificate Course
Contact
Get in touch.
The best places to find me are LinkedIn and GitHub.