Faris Aziz
Staff Front-End Engineer at Small PDF, Co-Founder of ZurichJS
In this episode of Señors @ Scale, host Neciu Dan sits down with Faris Aziz — Staff Front-End Engineer at Small PDF and co-founder of ZurichJS — to talk about scaling frontend systems, the power of BFF architecture, and the human side of engineering culture.
Main Takeaways from my conversation with Faris:
💪 From CrossFit to code.
Faris pivoted from coaching athletes to building software — using personal projects as his bootcamp for real-world learning.
🧩 BFF architecture done right.
A Backend-for-Frontend layer helped shrink payloads from 2.3MB to just 666 bytes, cutting down load times and saving mobile users from flaky 3G connections.
⚡ Implicit vs explicit performance.
It’s not about sprinkling useMemo everywhere. True React performance comes from component architecture, primitives, and data shaping.
📊 Architecture is about structure, not speed.
Atomic design, smart state management, and understanding REST vs GraphQL all shape how systems behave at scale.
🔍 Observability over endless tests.
Instead of a massive test suite, Small PDF leans on error tagging, monitoring, and rapid detection to manage outages across 30M users.
🔑 Culture as architecture.
With no heavy processes, engineers own deployments end-to-end. Accountability and trust replace bureaucracy — and build resilience.
🌍 Meetups are micro-architectures.
Co-founding ZurichJS taught Faris that communities scale like teams: structure, delegation, and ownership matter as much as code.
🏍 Balance through focus.
Racing motorbikes forces total focus — the same mindset Faris applies to high-stakes engineering.
📚 Recommended Reads:
- The Pragmatic Programmer by Andrew Hunt & David Thomas
🎬 Also in this episode:
- Why server-driven UI powers apps like JustEat and Airbnb
- How to think about REST, GraphQL, and TRPC in large systems
- Why debugging at 3 a.m. is more about confidence than code
Episode Length: 72 minutes of architecture lessons, culture insights, and scaling stories from production.
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