Skip to content
Hire me

Infrastructure as code for a credit-management platform

Scaling a React and Node.js credit-management platform on AWS — and codifying its infrastructure with AWS CDK and CloudFormation to cut deployment time by 40%.

2 min read
Client
Know-It Global (Darcy Quigley & Co.)
Industry
Fintech · Credit management
My role
Software Engineer
Timeline
2021 — 2022
  • 40% reduction in deployment time
  • IaC AWS CDK & CloudFormation
  • TDD test-first engineering

Tech stack

  • React
  • Node.js
  • AWS
  • AWS CDK
  • CloudFormation
  • CI/CD
  • TDD

Overview

Know-It Global is a platform built by Darcy Quigley & Co. that streamlines credit management — helping businesses mitigate risk, automate payments, reduce debtors and improve cash flow from a single interface. I worked on its large-scale React and Node.js applications and the AWS infrastructure that runs them.

The challenge

  • The platform served high-traffic workloads, so performance and scalability mattered across the front end and the APIs.
  • Complex Node.js APIs had to integrate with multiple services and databases.
  • Manually managed infrastructure made deployments slower and less predictable than they should be.
  • Quality had to keep pace with delivery in an Agile team.

Approach & solution

  • Infrastructure as code. Defined AWS infrastructure with AWS CDK and CloudFormation so environments are versioned, reviewable and reproducible.
  • Automated pipelines. Optimised CI/CD so every change is built, tested and deployed the same way.
  • Test-driven development. Wrote tests first for critical logic to catch regressions early.
  • Performance work on the React and Node.js applications so they handle high-traffic loads efficiently.

Architecture

Every change flows from a commit through automated tests into AWS CDK, which synthesises CloudFormation templates and deploys versioned stacks to AWS.

  1. Commit Pull request & review
  2. CI pipeline Automated tests
  3. AWS CDK Infrastructure as code
  4. CloudFormation Versioned stacks
  5. AWS APIs · services · data

Technical highlights

Reviewable infrastructure

Infrastructure changes go through the same pull-request review as application code.

Reproducible environments

CDK and CloudFormation stacks keep environments consistent and easy to recreate.

Test-driven development

Tests written first for critical paths kept quality high as the platform grew.

Built for scale

React and Node.js applications optimised to handle high-traffic loads efficiently.

Results & impact

  • 40% reduction in deployment time after automating infrastructure with AWS CDK and CloudFormation.
  • More reliable, repeatable deployments across environments.
  • Higher software quality through TDD and optimised CI/CD pipelines.
  • On-time delivery of high-quality features in an Agile environment.

Lessons learned

Infrastructure that lives in code gets reviewed, tested and improved like everything else. The time saved on each deployment compounds — and so does the team’s confidence to ship.

Facing a similar challenge?

I’m always happy to talk through architecture, integrations or delivery. Tell me what you’re building and let’s see if I can help.

Start a conversation