Overview
What this challenge is about.
Analyze control-plane traffic, design protobufs, build a gRPC Go server-client, and benchmark against REST to earn a verifiable certificate.
The scenario
Northwave Cloud runs managed Kubernetes for about 12,000 customer clusters from Seattle; its internal control-plane API absorbs roughly 250 million requests per second, and its latency tail now bleeds directly into the customer dashboard's responsiveness.
The Brief
What you'll do, and what you'll demonstrate.
Determine, with reproducible evidence, whether migrating the two highest-traffic control-plane methods from REST/JSON to gRPC meaningfully improves latency and CPU cost, and equip the team to extend that decision to the remaining 38 methods.
Earning criteria — what you'll demonstrate
- Translate an existing REST/JSON contract into idiomatic, forward-compatible gRPC service and message definitions
- Implement production-grade gRPC server/client behavior: deadline propagation, status-code error mapping, and observability instrumentation
- Design a fair benchmark that isolates the protocol variable and reports full latency distribution plus CPU cost
- Interpret CPU profiles and load-test output to reach a defensible engineering decision
- Document a repeatable migration pattern that others can execute without direct support
Program Fit
Where this fits in your program.
Sharpens the same skills your degree expects you to demonstrate.
Aligned coursework coming soon.
Skills
Skills you'll demonstrate.
Each one shows up on your verified credential.
- Grpc
Apply grpc to solve real industry problems and demonstrate production-level capability.
- Protobuf
Apply protobuf to solve real industry problems and demonstrate production-level capability.
- Api Design
Design RESTful and GraphQL APIs that are intuitive, consistent, and well-documented.
- Go
Apply go to solve real industry problems and demonstrate production-level capability.
- Benchmarking
Apply benchmarking to solve real industry problems and demonstrate production-level capability.
- Performance Optimization
Apply performance optimization to solve real industry problems and demonstrate production-level capability.
Careers
Career paths this challenge builds toward
Completing this challenge demonstrates skills that transfer directly to these roles:
Platform Engineer
Mirrors the core platform work of evolving an internal API contract and proving the change with evidence. You leave able to design a gRPC interface, ship a production-grade Go implementation, and defend a migration decision to a team roadmap.
This challenge sharpens
- grpc
- api-design
- go
Performance Engineer
Centers on the discipline of fair benchmarking and profiling under realistic load. You practice isolating a single variable, reading latency distributions and CPU profiles, and turning measurements into an actionable optimization recommendation.
This challenge sharpens
- benchmarking
- performance-optimization
- grpc
Backend Services Engineer
Builds the protocol-design and service-implementation muscle backend teams rely on. You translate an existing contract into a typed schema, implement robust server/client behavior, and document a repeatable pattern for the rest of the team.
This challenge sharpens
- protobuf
- api-design
- go