I am Ankit Sarkar, a Solution Architect and hands-on Principal Engineer based in Leeds, United Kingdom. I have 13+ years of experience designing, modernising and supporting business-critical platforms across retail, fulfilment, logistics, integration and enterprise technology landscapes.
My background combines deep C#/.NET engineering with solution architecture across APIs, distributed systems, event-driven integration, cloud services, DevOps, observability and production support. I enjoy working close to the code while also shaping the wider architecture decisions that help teams build systems that are reliable, maintainable and easier to evolve.
A lot of my work sits in the space where legacy applications, modern APIs, cloud platforms, data flows and live operations all need to run together. That has shaped a pragmatic architecture style: understand the current estate, identify the real sources of risk or friction, define a clear target direction, and help teams move there through practical, low-risk steps.
Core Strengths
- Legacy application assessment and phased migration planning.
- .NET service design using ASP.NET Core, REST APIs, SQL Server and integration services.
- API-first services, service boundaries, event-driven architecture, asynchronous integration flows and production-ready engineering standards.
- Azure architecture and cloud-hosted workloads, including reliability improvements, CI/CD practices, observability and support/run controls.
- Retail technology platforms across CRM, OMS, inventory, store operations, fulfilment, item movement and master data.
- Logistics and consolidation platforms involving transactional workflows, traceability, customer visibility and system-to-system integrations.
- Practical AI adoption for knowledge discovery, support workflows, incident summarisation, migration assessment, code review support and engineering productivity.
Retail And Omnichannel
I currently work within a large UK retail technology landscape across CRM, OMS, inventory, store operations, fulfilment, item movement and integration services. These platforms depend on accurate stock signals, reliable order flows, store execution and clear support paths when production issues happen.
The work involves architecture discussions, technical assessments, service/API design, reliability improvements and engineering guidance across distributed teams. A recurring theme is keeping critical retail journeys stable while moving platforms toward cleaner interfaces and more maintainable service patterns.
Legacy Modernisation And Cloud Migration
I have worked on legacy retail applications and integration services where the goal was to move from on-premise hosting toward cloud-based platforms while improving maintainability and reducing long-term support risk.
Typical work includes understanding existing system behaviour, assessing application dependencies, supporting lift-and-shift migration paths, identifying weak points in integrations, improving API and service design, and helping teams modernise in stages rather than attempting high-risk replacement in one step.
My strongest hands-on cloud background is in Microsoft Azure, backed by Microsoft certification including Azure Solutions Architect Expert. I also work across multi-cloud architecture discussions and continue to build active AWS knowledge. The architecture thinking is not limited to one platform: compute, networking, integration, security, data, monitoring, resilience and cost all matter.
Azure Architecture And Engineering
My Azure experience spans both architecture and hands-on engineering. I have worked with Azure as a platform for modernising legacy applications, hosting .NET services, integrating enterprise systems and improving the reliability of business-critical workloads.
The areas I commonly work across include Azure App Service, Azure Functions, Azure Storage, Azure SQL, managed identities, private networking, private endpoints, DNS, monitoring, application diagnostics and secure service-to-service communication. I also have practical experience with Azure integration patterns such as queue-based processing, event-driven flows, background jobs and API-led connectivity.
From an architecture perspective, I think about Azure decisions in terms of workload fit, operational support, resilience, security boundaries, deployment paths, observability and cost. That includes helping teams choose between hosting models, define integration approaches, design network access, improve release pipelines and make production systems easier to monitor, troubleshoot and recover.
My Azure certifications support this hands-on background across administration, development, DevOps, solution architecture and AI. The value for me is not just knowing individual Azure services, but being able to connect them into practical platform designs that teams can build, run and evolve safely.
Event-Driven Architecture
I have hands-on experience designing and implementing event-driven and asynchronous integration patterns for systems that need to exchange state reliably without creating tight runtime coupling.
This includes working with queues, topics, publish/subscribe flows, event notifications, integration middleware and background processing patterns in .NET and cloud-hosted services. I focus on the engineering details that make event-driven systems dependable in production: message contracts, schema evolution, idempotency, retries, dead-letter handling, correlation IDs, traceability, replay considerations and clear operational support paths.
In retail and fulfilment contexts, these patterns are especially useful for order flow, inventory updates, item movement, store execution, status propagation and downstream system synchronisation. The goal is not just to move messages between systems, but to make business-critical processes observable, recoverable and resilient when part of the landscape is slow, unavailable or changing.
Leadership
I work closely with architects, engineering leads, operations teams, delivery managers and senior stakeholders. I am often involved in discovery work, architecture reviews, technical design authority discussions, delivery planning, production improvement, mentoring and cross-team alignment.
My leadership style is pragmatic and hands-on. I like clear technical direction, but I also care about delivery reality: the estate that already exists, the people who support it, the risks that need to be managed and the incremental steps that make change possible without destabilising live operations.
I try to create alignment between architecture intent and engineering execution. That usually means translating high-level direction into service boundaries, integration choices, migration steps, quality expectations and operational controls that teams can actually build and support. I also spend time helping teams make trade-offs visible, especially when there are competing pressures around delivery timelines, technical debt, production stability and long-term maintainability.
I enjoy mentoring engineers and helping teams raise their engineering standards through code reviews, design reviews, implementation guidance and production support learning. The goal is not to make architecture a document-heavy checkpoint, but to make it part of everyday engineering decisions: how services communicate, how failures are handled, how systems are observed and how change can be introduced safely.
In stakeholder conversations, I focus on being clear about options, consequences and recommended next steps. I prefer practical roadmaps over big-bang transformation plans: understand what matters to the business, reduce the highest-risk areas first, and keep teams moving toward a cleaner target architecture while protecting live operations.
AI And Engineering Innovation
I am currently building and writing around practical agentic AI for .NET developers, with a focus on patterns that can move from local experimentation to enterprise use. A major part of that work is around the Microsoft Agent Framework, where I contribute tutorial content and examples that explain agents, tools, memory, workflows, state, checkpoints and hosting patterns in a way that working engineers can apply.
My interest is not AI as a demo layer on top of existing systems. I am more interested in how AI can become part of real engineering and operational workflows: support assistants, documentation search, incident summarisation, migration assessment, code review support, tool-assisted research and reusable engineering automation.
The patterns I am exploring include single-agent applications, multi-step agent workflows, deterministic orchestration around LLM reasoning, tool calling, RAG, MCP-style tooling, local model development with LM Studio, GitHub Copilot, Codex and AI-assisted developer workflows. I am especially interested in the boundary between flexible AI reasoning and reliable software engineering: how to add structure, state, observability, safety checks and human review around agentic systems.
Recent examples of this work include Microsoft Agent Framework tutorial paths for agent essentials and advanced orchestration, including tools, memory, multi-turn conversations, workflow orchestration, shared state, checkpoints and Azure Functions hosting. I am also building C# SDK and integration work around ScrapeGraphAI and Linkup, with the goal of making web extraction, research workflows and agent tools easier to use from .NET applications.
For enterprise teams, I see the strongest value in AI where it reduces friction in existing delivery and support processes: finding knowledge faster, summarising noisy operational context, helping engineers assess legacy systems, guiding migration work, reviewing code, and turning repeatable expert workflows into assisted tools.
Currently Building
I am currently building and contributing around agentic AI, developer tooling and C# SDKs:
- microsoft-agent-framework/microsoft-agent-framework.github.io - Microsoft Agent Framework site and tutorial content.
- anktsrkr/scrapegraphai-csharp-sdk - a C# SDK and Agent Framework integration for ScrapeGraphAI.
- anktsrkr/linkup-csharp-sdk - a C# SDK for Linkup.
Selected Open Source Contributions
When time allows, I contribute to open-source projects in the .NET ecosystem:
- Ocelot - an API gateway for .NET and ASP.NET Core applications. I have been involved as an organization member of ThreeMammals, the organization behind Ocelot.
- Elsa Workflows - a workflows library for .NET applications. I contributed distributed lock providers based on Azure Blob Storage and Redis.
- AspNetCoreCertificates - a package for creating certificates for client/server authentication and IoT scenarios. I contributed to common OID support.
Certifications And Badges
I keep my certifications current across cloud architecture, Azure engineering, DevOps, AI and GitHub platform capabilities. Microsoft certifications can be verified through my Microsoft Learn transcript, while GitHub badges are available through my Credly profile.
| Credential | Provider | Credential number | Earned on | Expires on |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Microsoft Certified: Azure Administrator Associate | Microsoft | B95AF2-9D48J4 | Sep 26, 2022 | Sep 27, 2026 |
| Microsoft Certified: Azure Developer Associate | Microsoft | 9CB544-A09M6F | Dec 9, 2020 | Dec 9, 2026 |
| Microsoft Certified: DevOps Engineer Expert | Microsoft | 7A37C4-30AE10 | Dec 21, 2020 | Dec 21, 2026 |
| Microsoft Certified: Azure Solutions Architect Expert | Microsoft | 95E76A-WBDC21 | Feb 1, 2021 | Feb 1, 2027 |
| Microsoft Certified: Azure AI Engineer Associate | Microsoft | 2402F9-9A725G | Sep 8, 2025 | Sep 9, 2027 |
| Microsoft Certified: Azure AI Fundamentals | Microsoft | D4C96E-1GBC87 | May 26, 2025 | N/A |
| Microsoft Certified: Azure Fundamentals | Microsoft | DDD658-4A11N7 | Nov 24, 2020 | N/A |
| GitHub Administration | GitHub | N/A | N/A | Apr 14, 2029 |
| GitHub Advanced Security | GitHub | N/A | N/A | Apr 10, 2028 |
| GitHub Actions | GitHub | N/A | N/A | Apr 3, 2028 |
| GitHub Copilot | GitHub | N/A | N/A | Mar 23, 2028 |
| GitHub Foundations | GitHub | N/A | N/A | Mar 11, 2028 |
Connect
- Email: ankt.srkr@gmail.com
Disclaimer
The contents of this blog are living documents from my learning process. Opinions are my own. If you notice something incorrect or want to discuss an idea, feel free to get in touch.