Professional Project
Deepstory
Overview
Deepstory is a social media platform built to let users share and discover rich, story-driven content. As the sole developer, I owned the full lifecycle — from initial architecture decisions to production deployment — for both the Android client and the backend infrastructure.
Role
Full Stack Android Developer (Sole Engineer) at Designare Solutions
Problem
The startup needed a production-ready social media Android application with no existing codebase or infrastructure. Every architectural decision — data modeling, API design, media handling, and deployment — had to be made from scratch under startup timelines, with a single engineer responsible for delivery.
Solution
I designed a layered Android architecture using MVVM with clean separation between the UI, domain, and data layers. The backend was built as a RESTful Node.js service backed by PostgreSQL, deployed on Google Cloud Platform for scalability. Media assets were handled through GCP Cloud Storage to keep the database lean and CDN-friendly.
Architecture
The system is composed of a native Android client communicating with a Node.js REST API, with PostgreSQL as the relational store and GCP Cloud Storage for media. All services run on GCP for unified infrastructure management.
Key Design Decisions
- MVVM architecture on Android with LiveData and ViewModel for reactive UI state
- RESTful Node.js API with JWT-based authentication and role-based access control
- PostgreSQL schema designed for social graph relationships (follows, likes, comments)
- GCP Cloud Storage for user-uploaded media with signed URL access
- Deployed on GCP Compute Engine with environment-based configuration
- Retrofit + OkHttp on Android for typed, interceptor-based HTTP communication
Challenges
- Designing a scalable social graph schema in PostgreSQL without over-engineering for a startup's early user base
- Managing real-time feed personalization with limited infrastructure budget
- Sole ownership across Android, API, and DevOps required context-switching with no safety net
- Handling media upload flows on Android with background workers while keeping UX responsive
Impact
- Delivered a fully functional social media Android app from zero to production as a single engineer
- Architecture decisions allowed the team to onboard additional developers without major refactoring
- Established a reliable GCP-based deployment pipeline reused across subsequent projects