Brandur Leach Portfolio
Long-running blog by a backend engineer who spent years building Stripe's and Heroku's public APIs, now writing about Postgres at Snowflake/Crunchy Data. Posts like the Heroku HTTP API Design Guide are cited across the industry as reference material for REST API design.
What makes it work
A breakdown of the choices that make this portfolio stand out.
API design writing grounded in production experience
His posts on API design (idempotency keys, the Heroku HTTP API guide) come directly from building and operating Stripe's and Heroku's public APIs at scale, not from theorizing about REST in the abstract.
A dedicated "fragments" feed for short technical notes
Separating quick technical observations ("fragments") from long-form essays lets him publish frequently without diluting the archive of deep-dive posts — a structure worth copying for anyone maintaining a technical blog long-term.
A newsletter (Nanoglyph) that compounds the blog's reach
Turning blog output into a recurring newsletter format keeps a decade-plus archive from going stale and gives returning readers a reason to keep checking in.
What Backend Developers can take from this
Specific, actionable tips to apply to your own portfolio — no generic advice.
Write about the systems you actually operate, not systems you've only read about — production experience is what makes technical writing credible.
Separate short notes from long-form essays into different feeds so quick thoughts don't bury your deep-dive work.
An about page that states your actual job history and what you worked on (not just "software engineer") gives visitors a reason to trust your technical opinions.
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