Learning to Design Systems for Scalability

​In association with Women's Dev Singapore, Zenika presents A Practitioner’s Perspective:

​​Scalability is often treated as a purely technical challenge — something to solve with the right architecture, tools, or infrastructure. In reality, it is just as much about how we think.

In this talk, Fion shares her journey of learning to design for scalability through real-world experience — navigating evolving requirements, growing systems, and the trade-offs that come with them. Rather than focusing on deep technical patterns, the session explores the decision-making process behind building systems that can grow sustainably.
Through practical examples, she will reflect on:

• ​How to recognise when scalability becomes a concern

• ​Balancing simplicity vs. future-proofing

• ​Breaking down systems into manageable, evolvable components

• ​Learning from constraints, failures, and iteration

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This session is designed for developers who are early to mid in their journey, or anyone looking to strengthen their intuition around building systems that don’t just work today — but continue to work as they scale.

About the Speaker - Fion Sim:

​Fion is a fullstack web developer focused on building robust, scalable applications across the modern web stack. She has hands-on experience with frontend frameworks such as Next.js and Angular, and develops backend microservices using Node.js and Prisma.
Driven by curiosity and continuous learning, Fion is particularly interested in how systems evolve over time — and how thoughtful design decisions can support long-term scalability and maintainability.