Senior Software Architect
Ivan Ball-llovera
Cloud-native enterprise architecture on the Microsoft stack
I design and ship production-grade .NET platforms: modular monoliths that extract cleanly into microservices, event-driven messaging, and Azure-native delivery, with architecture discipline enforced at build time, not in a wiki.
About
Architecture that earns its keep
I am a Senior Software Architect with more than 25 years designing and delivering scalable, cloud-native systems on the Microsoft stack. My focus is Domain-Driven Design, Clean Architecture, CQRS, and microservices, paired with hands-on Azure cloud architecture and DevOps (Bicep, Docker, Kubernetes, CI/CD).
I have a proven record of leading architectural refactors, modernizing legacy platforms, and mentoring cross-functional teams to raise engineering standards. Right now I am architecting production-grade .NET 10 platforms that span the modular-monolith-to-microservices path, event-driven messaging, and AI/RAG integration, while using AI-assisted development workflows to ship faster without trading away quality.
Architecture & design
DDD, Clean Architecture, CQRS, modular monolith to microservices, event-driven and the outbox pattern, gRPC, and API gateways (YARP).
Cloud & DevOps
Azure Container Apps, Service Bus, Cosmos DB, SQL, and App Insights, with Bicep IaC, containers, Kubernetes, and OIDC / managed identity.
Quality & delivery
xUnit, Playwright, TDD, accessibility (axe, WCAG 2.1 AA), architecture fitness functions, and AI-assisted development with Claude Code and Copilot.
Featured work
The MMCA platform
A production-grade .NET 10 framework and a set of reference apps that demonstrate modern enterprise architecture end to end. It is built as a modular monolith that extracts cleanly into independent microservices: modules load in topological order and run behind a YARP gateway with gRPC contracts and typed clients, keeping transport reversible at the edge. The conference application was deployed to Azure and powered the live 2026 Atlanta Cloud + AI Conference, and will also power the 2026 Atlanta Developers Conference.
- Modular monolith, extractable. Modules are discovered and loaded in topological order, then run as their own service with no domain rewrite.
- Database-per-service with an outbox. Events persist atomically with the data and deliver at least once, in process or over a broker.
- Rules that fail the build. A compile-time layer guard plus a shared NetArchTest library run as fitness functions in every repo.
- Graded in the open. Every repo is scored against a 34-category rubric, with the evidence and the gaps published.
Writing
Deep dives on enterprise .NET
A long-form series turning the framework's decisions into teachable patterns, every claim grounded in real source. The three most recent:
The series index
The full series index and recommended reading order.
Saga compensation and the reconciliation backstop
Undo as a first-class event handler: give back stock a committed transaction already took, with a periodic sweep as the saga-timeout backstop.
Observability by default
A shared OpenTelemetry baseline with CQRS duration metrics, correlation IDs, and outbox-poll span filtering, exported to Azure Monitor.
Community
Speaking & giving back
I help run two community-driven Atlanta technology conferences and keep production-grade patterns free and in the open.
Two Atlanta conferences
Lead organizer of the Atlanta Cloud + AI Conference (324 attendees, 53 speakers, 50 sessions in 2026) and the Atlanta Developers Conference, where I also speak on Clean Architecture and DDD.
Patterns in anyone's hands
My framework is Apache-2.0 licensed and documented so production-grade enterprise patterns are free to use. I mentor engineers at every level, in English and Spanish.