Serverless IoT at world scale
The remote-control platform for a global fleet of connected home appliances — the backend bridging IoT data flows and customer apps, evolved in production without breaking anything.
The challenge
The platform was already live, worldwide. Every new feature had to ship against a fleet of devices in people's homes — where a regression doesn't show up in a bug tracker, it shows up as an appliance that stops responding.
Architecture
Two directions, one contract: state flows up, intent flows down.
What made it work
- Serverless bridge: AWS Lambda functions in Node.js connecting device IoT data with the mobile apps, behind a GraphQL layer on AWS AppSync.
- Two kinds of flow, one platform: automated behaviors (timers, schedules) and real-time manual commands — switch a device on with specific settings, from anywhere.
- Backward compatibility as a discipline: every release had to coexist with devices already in the field; months of feature work shipped with zero regressions, confirmed by CI/CD, automated tests and human QA before production.
Outcome
New functionality delivered steadily on a live worldwide platform, with explicit praise on performance — the kind of work where the best result is that nobody noticed anything except the new features.