Software Architecture Consultancy, Taipei
Clinton van Blommestein
The senior architect your Taiwan team can use, and your HQ can understand.
Twenty-four years building production systems on three continents. Now embedded with engineering teams in Taipei, bridging local execution and global decision-making.
Taipei, Taiwan
About
I'm Clinton, a software architect based in Taipei since 2018. I lead architecture for a multi-region platform serving customers across Asia and Europe, with engineering teams in Taiwan, Israel and Australia. The day job, in practice, is keeping architectural decisions consistent across time zones, languages and engineering cultures. That's the same work I do as an independent consultant.
Three things shape how I work. IDesign methodology means decisions come from system volatilities rather than from pattern-matching against a reference architecture. Production scars mean every recommendation here was paid for in incidents, on-calls and cross-border launches rather than whiteboard exercises. And plain English means I can explain to the people funding the work why your queue is the wrong abstraction, and explain to a staff engineer why their deadline is the right one.
I take on one or two new consulting engagements per quarter alongside my ongoing work.
Services
Architecture Review
Independent assessment of existing systems, identifying risks, scalability gaps, and improvement paths.
System Design
End-to-end architecture design for new platforms, cloud migrations, and distributed systems.
AWS Migration
Migration architecture and sequencing for workloads moving to AWS: target design, move order and a cost model.
Technical Consultancy
Ongoing advisory for engineering teams on architecture decisions, technology selection, and best practices.
More detail on the services page, or get in touch.
Core expertise
C# / .NET
Backend services, APIs and high-throughput applications on the .NET ecosystem.
Data & messaging architecture
SQL Server, DynamoDB, Couchbase, and NoSQL data modelling. Pub/sub messaging, event-driven architectures, and message queues for high-throughput distributed systems.
Distributed systems
Designing scalable, fault-tolerant architectures using microservices, message queues, event sourcing, and event-driven patterns.
Cloud architecture
Cloud-native design for multi-region production workloads on AWS. AWS Certified Solutions Architect Professional, 2020 to 2023.
Track record
35,000 transactions / min
On platforms I architect, each transaction validated inline against regulatory and business rules at production throughput.
14M requests / month
An image delivery service with zero recorded downtime. On-the-fly transformation, serving marketing and brand assets to partner companies worldwide.
Asia + Europe
Lead architect from Taipei since 2018, working with engineering teams in Israel and Australia. Production deployments across multiple AWS regions in Asia and Europe.
Credentials & education
Taiwan MODA High-Level Professional Recommendation
Recommended by the Ministry of Digital Affairs as a high-level professional in the field of software architecture, 2026.
AWS Certified Solutions Architect Professional
Scored 911/1000, held 2020 to 2023.
BSc Computer Science, With Distinction
University of South Africa (UNISA).
IDesign Architecture Training
Under Juval Löwy, 2019–2020.
Taiwan Permanent Residency (APRC)
Held since 2023.
Full background, credentials and speaking history on the about page.
Community & speaking
Conference speaker
Couchbase Connect, Silicon Valley · PASS Data Community Summit · Durban SQL User Group.
Couchbase Champion
Recognised for contributions to the global Couchbase developer community.
Common questions
How long does an architecture review take?
Typically two to four weeks of calendar time, depending on system complexity and the number of stakeholders. The deliverable is a written risk register, a prioritised remediation roadmap, and an executive readout.
Do you work remote, or only on-site in Taipei?
Both. Most engagements are hybrid. Discovery and the key workshops happen in person in Taipei where possible, with the rest delivered remotely. Fully remote engagements are also available.
What size companies do you typically work with?
Companies with 30 to 500 engineers globally, often with regional offices or engineering hubs in Taiwan. Foreign-owned subsidiaries in Taipei, Taiwan-headquartered SaaS companies scaling internationally, and US or European companies operating engineering teams in Asia are the common patterns.
Do you write code, or only design architecture?
My focus is architectural decisions, system design and engineering judgement rather than implementation. Engagements produce designs, decision records and roadmaps; your team writes the code. Where it helps I'll write a reference implementation to validate a critical path, but I'm not a contractor delivering production code.
Can you work with a Mandarin-speaking engineering team?
My working language is English. I don't speak or write Mandarin, so an engagement with a Mandarin-only team needs an English-speaking bridge. Usually that is a bilingual team lead or engineer on the client side, or a paid interpreter for the sessions that matter. Most foreign-owned subsidiaries in Taipei already run in English internally, so for that shape of engagement it rarely comes up.
How are engagements priced?
Most engagements are quoted as fixed-scope projects against defined deliverables rather than hourly. Architecture reviews and system-design engagements are scoped and quoted per project; retainer and advisory work is priced per month against agreed scope. Specific quotes are provided after a short discovery call.
Get in touch
我是常駐台北的軟體架構師，提供獨立顧問服務：架構評估、系統設計、AWS 雲端遷移、技術顧問，專注於分散式系統與雲端架構。服務對象為台灣的工程團隊與跨國企業。諮詢以英文進行，目前不提供中文諮詢，敬請見諒。