Full Stack Software Engineer
Backup & Restore for Cloud Networks
Nexivity·Sydney, Australia
May 2026 – Present
Synopsis
Nexivity is a Sydney network-automation consultancy and Cisco Meraki partner. I'm the engineer on its SaaS product, BackupMeraki, working directly with the founder. BackupMeraki backs up, restores and compares the configuration of cloud-managed Cisco Meraki networks, effectively version control and disaster recovery for networks. I take each piece of work from a scope or design doc through to shipped code across eight repositories.
The Making Of
🎯 The Challenge
BackupMeraki captures an entire Cisco Meraki organisation's configuration through hundreds of rate-limited API calls, stores each run as a restorable version, and has to tell customers honestly what a restore actually did. I joined with no networking background, as the company's only engineer besides the founder.
💡 The Solution
Work runs design-doc first: investigate, agree the scope with the founder, then build across whichever of the eight repositories it touches. When a Cisco SDK upgrade broke large backups, I read the SDK's source, measured how the old system really behaved, and restored it with a single concurrency gate. I rebuilt the restore report by tracing every outcome path in code, and I direct AI coding agents one reviewed plan item at a time.
🚀 The Impact
Large-network backups complete cleanly again, customers get a restore report that tells the truth at a glance, IP-restricted customers can allowlist one fixed address, and support runs through a single-sign-on portal. That's 32 tickets in six months on a part-time contract.
Key Contributions
- 1Fixed backups of large networks that were losing data under Cisco's API rate limits, by reading the SDK's source to find the regression, measuring the old system's real behaviour, and restoring it with a single concurrency gate
- 2Rebuilt the report customers see after a restore so it shows at a glance what was restored, what was already correct and what failed, with every outcome path traced in code and verified by live restores
- 3Designed per-organisation licensing across seven repositories: DynamoDB data model, Stripe-driven plan changes and a daily compliance job
- 4Gave customers with strict firewalls a fixed outbound IP to allowlist, using per-customer NAT gateways and Elastic IPs on ECS Fargate. Designed in my first week, with no networking background
- 5Chose and launched the customer support portal and knowledge base, with single sign-on through Cognito so customers never need a second login
- 6Audited the dashboard screen by screen with automated browser sweeps, then cleaned it up, proving each change safe with before/after screenshot comparisons
- 7Run AI-assisted development as a discipline: design doc first, one reviewed AI session per plan item, and house-style rules so AI-written code reads like the rest of the codebase. I own every design decision, review and commit
Key Metrics
Skills & Technologies
- Next.js / TypeScriptDashboard Frontend
- Python / AWS LambdaBackend & APIs
- AWS ECS FargateBackup/Restore Jobs
- Amazon DynamoDBPrimary Datastore
- Amazon S3Backup Artifacts
- AWS CognitoAuth & OIDC SSO
- StripeSubscription Billing
- Cisco Meraki APIIntegration
- PlaywrightUI Audits & Regression Checks
Quick Info
- Company
- Nexivity
- Location
- Sydney, Australia
- Type
- Part-time
- Duration
- Ongoing (6 months)
- Complexity
- Senior