Production systems that hold,
and games that actually
reach the store.
I am Kofi Shang — a senior backend and platform engineer with ten-plus years on other people's load-bearing systems: payments, energy analytics, spatial data, federal statistics. On my own time I run a studio that ships finished games and AI products with live billing.
The shape of every system I have shipped for a client.
Payment workflows at TreviPay, energy analytics at MCG, spatial data services for the Census Bureau through Spatial Front, the operator platform at Shielda — different domains, same skeleton. An authenticated edge, a thin service layer, a cache that carries the common case, and a database that only sees what it must. Send a request and watch where the milliseconds go.
A cache hit is not an optimisation you add later — it is the design. Built this way, MCG's energy platform held 99.95% uptime, Valve's internal tooling served 10,000+ people a day, and API response times there came down 35%.
Three kinds of work, one person accountable for the result.
Backend & platform engineering
APIs and services that hold up under real load. Microservice boundaries and API contracts, schema and data modeling, ETL pipelines, cloud deployment on Azure and AWS, and enough observability to actually debug the thing at three in the morning. When the work runs full stack, the operator interface on top of it is mine too — React and TypeScript through to the service behind it.
Game development & release
Prototype through store page. Unreal Engine 5 and Godot gameplay programming, web and Electron builds, networked multiplayer, and the unglamorous release work: Steamworks integration, achievements, leaderboards, cloud saves, depot uploads and a demo build that installs cleanly.
AI products, end to end
Not a demo — a product that takes money. Onboarding and accounts, the AI feature itself, subscription billing and cancellation, and the admin tooling you need on day one when a customer writes in.
Five things worth reading in full.
My current role, two contracts and two of my own. Each one opens a case study: the brief, the constraint that made it hard, and what shipped.
LIGHT FORCE
An arcade physics runner on one mechanic — hold to charge, release to dash. A canvas engine in Electron with Steamworks, on Windows, macOS and Linux.
Steam page →Forest Quest '88
A deadpan text adventure on a phosphor-green CRT. Vite and Tauri; a local model rolls dice, never writes prose.
Blackout
Pitch-black multiplayer horror in UE 5.5 — replicated locomotion, proximity voice, and a Python tool that generates maps headlessly.
EmpathyFlow · Dishcovery
Roleplay practice with graded feedback, and craving-first restaurant discovery on Next.js and Firebase. Both live, both billing.
Risk-first trading agent
Paper-only, with an immutable risk engine: exposure caps, daily-loss halt, drawdown kill switch. No code path lets model output widen a limit.
UE5 plugin suite · local-first AI
Replicated NPC memory, per-player level streaming, server-authoritative spawns. Plus private local tools — and a live D&D sheet with the rules built in.
Seven contracted engagements since 2020, almost all Unreal Engine: gameplay and VR work in Blueprints and C++, UI design, Gameplay Ability System test coverage, and turning a cinematic scene into something playable. Five of five stars on the three most recent.
“Great freelancer, skillful, quick and reliable, absolutely recommended!”
Client · Unreal Engine UI Designer, 2024“Impressive results, would definitely work with again!”
Client · UI Design for Unreal Engine Project, 2024A decade of other people's production systems, and my own studio.
Most of my contract work has been the load-bearing kind: security platforms, payment processing, energy analytics, spatial data systems and federal statistical work. Shangko Co is where I put that discipline into products with my own name on them.
Tell me what you are building.
Contract engineering, a full-time backend seat, a game that needs finishing, or an AI tool that has to work on real data. Send a paragraph about the problem and I will tell you honestly whether I am the right person for it.
Shangko Co · Pennsylvania
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