> Markdown alternate of https://steerscale.com/about

About SteerScale

# Production engineering, without the layers.

SteerScale is a senior-engineer-led consultancy founded by Barnabás Szőke. The person assessing the system is the person doing the engineering.

The practice stays small on purpose: one or two engagements at a time, written status every week, and no handoff from the person you spoke to first to someone you did not.

Barnabás Szőke

Senior Software Architect · Founder, SteerScale

EXPERIENCE

15+ years, production systems

BASED

Budapest · remote across Europe

DOMAINS

Streaming, retail, fintech, aviation, gaming, SaaS

FOCUS

AI systems · distributed systems · cloud reliability

[LinkedIn](https://uk.linkedin.com/in/barnabasszoke)[GitHub](https://github.com/szokebarnabas)[hello@steerscale.com](mailto:hello@steerscale.com)

NO SYNTHETIC PORTRAIT · ADD AUTHENTIC PHOTOGRAPHY IF AVAILABLE

01 / Philosophy

## Four working principles.

1.  01
    
    ### Evidence before recommendations.
    
    Measure first. Traces, cost data and controlled comparisons come before opinions about architecture.
    
2.  02
    
    ### Production behaviour beats diagrams.
    
    Architecture must survive reality: load, partial failure, retries, rate limits and the cost of every call.
    
3.  03
    
    ### Complexity must earn its cost.
    
    Prefer simpler systems where possible. Most production failures have boring causes; solve those first.
    
4.  04
    
    ### Ownership remains with the customer.
    
    Engineering should leave the customer's team stronger: written decisions, code in their repo, no dependency on us.
    

02 / Selected production work

## Where the production hours come from.

Backend, infrastructure and reactive-systems work across video streaming, retail, fintech, gaming, aviation and SaaS.

16M

concurrent users · NFL playoff broadcast, 2023

80K TPS

sustained writes · bookmarking API on Cassandra

1.  2024 — now
    
    SteerScale
    
    Founder & Senior Software Architect · AI systems, distributed systems, cloud reliability
    
2.  2022 — now
    
    Sky / NBCUniversal
    
    Global video streaming platform (Peacock, NOW, Sky Showtime) · high-throughput backend services
    
3.  2019 — 2022
    
    Tesco
    
    Technical lead · price transformation and payment platforms
    
4.  2018 — 2019
    
    Engage Technology Partners
    
    Tech lead · vendor and agency back-office SaaS
    
5.  2017 — 2018
    
    Ladbrokes Coral
    
    Real-time CRM big-data platform
    
6.  2016 — 2017
    
    ClearScore
    
    Credit score service · reactive microservices, Java / Scala
    
7.  2015 — 2016
    
    UnderwriteMe
    
    Insurance comparison platform
    
8.  2014 — 2015
    
    Gamesys
    
    Remote game platform · Virgin Poker on AWS
    
9.  2013 — 2014
    
    Lufthansa Systems
    
    NetLine/Ops++ airline operations control
    
10.  2010 — 2013
     
     evosoft (Siemens)
     
     Rail-control diagnostic systems
     

03 / Current focus

## Built on 15+ years of production engineering.

The core of the practice remains backend, distributed-systems and cloud engineering. A growing share of current work applies that foundation to AI systems: LLM orchestration, model selection, inference economics, evaluation, reliability and observability. For teams already running an LLM or agent workflow, the [AI Systems Audit](https://steerscale.com/services/ai-systems-audit) offers a fixed-scope way to start.

[Architecture & Leadership](https://steerscale.com/services/architecture-technical-leadership) [AI Systems Engineering](https://steerscale.com/services/ai-systems-engineering) [Distributed Systems](https://steerscale.com/services/backend-distributed-systems) [Cloud & Reliability](https://steerscale.com/services/cloud-platform-reliability)

## Bring one real system and the question behind it.

[Discuss your system](https://steerscale.com/contact)