About me
Hey 👋 I'm Shota Yamazaki
A solutions architect, engineering leader, and occasional open source maintainer based in Tokyo.
I've spent 13+ years designing and reviewing production systems at scale — cloud architecture, distributed systems, large-scale data platforms, and AI. Currently at AWS, where I lead a team of architects serving some of Japan's largest digital platform companies. I work directly with engineering leaders on multi-year technical strategies, and I still get my hands dirty in architecture reviews and system design.
What I write about
This blog is where I unpack the design decisions behind real-world systems. Not "how to use Service X" — more like "why we chose this approach over three alternatives, what broke, and what we'd do differently." Trade-offs, constraints, failure modes. The stuff that doesn't fit in a README.
Beyond cloud architecture and distributed systems, I also write about AI systems — from RAG pipelines to agentic architectures — and how organizational structure shapes technical decisions.
Architecture Dojo
I'm known for Architecture Dojo — a recurring session at AWS Summit Japan where we tackle real architecture challenges live on stage. It's been running since 2022 and consistently draws 2,000+ registrations. I've been a panelist and host. A lot of what I write here comes from the patterns and trade-offs we debate in those sessions. You can find related posts in the Architecture Dojo series.
OSS
I maintain Fluent plugin for Amazon Kinesis (awslabs, 19M+ downloads) and authored ActivityNotification for Ruby on Rails (510+ stars). Still writing code — mostly with AI these days.