TicketSms

TicketSms – Event ticketing & booking platform

Building and evolving backend services and integrations for a high-traffic digital ticketing platform.

TicketSms is a digital platform for managing event ticketing and bookings, from online sales to access control at venues.
The core of the business depends on a backend that can handle peaks of traffic, multiple integration points and a continuous flow of new product requirements from organisers and partners.

While employed at TicketSms, the work contributed to the evolution of a digital platform for event ticketing and bookings, covering the full lifecycle from online sales to on-site access control.

The focus was on strengthening backend services supporting the booking experience, improving integrations with external systems, and contributing to process and technology decisions to ensure scalability, reliability and long-term sustainability.

COMPANY

TicketSms

DOMAIN

Event ticketing · Digital bookings · Live entertainment

ROLE (at the time)

Gaetano Borgosano -- Senior Backend Software Engineer & acting Innovation Manager

Engagement

In-house role (employee)

PERIOD

February 2024 – August 2025

STATUS

Live, in production


Context & challenge

A ticketing platform sits in the middle of several moving parts:

  • high and unpredictable traffic around specific events
  • multiple touchpoints (web, mobile, partner tools),
  • integrations with external services (payments, communication, third-party systems),
  • strict expectations on reliability and latency.

The main challenge was to evolve the backend and integrations while:

  • keeping the platform stable for ongoing events,
  • ensuring new features were feasible and maintainable,
  • helping the team make informed decisions on architecture, tools and processes.

Role & responsibilities

My formal role was Senior Backend Software Engineer. In practice, I also covered responsibilities close to an Innovation Manager on the technology side. Main activities included:

  • studying and evaluating architectural options, integration patterns and technical feasibility for new features
  • providing quantitative evaluations to support planning and prioritisation (effort, complexity, impact)
  • designing and developing backend services for the booking platform
  • designing and implementing integrations with external services via web APIs
  • performing code reviews, quality checks and validation activities
  • supporting the optimisation of the development process through better architectures, tools and workflows

Approach

The work combined hands-on backend development with architectural guidance and process improvement:

  • Architecture & integration design
    Analysed requirements and constraints for new features and integrations, proposing patterns that balanced performance, complexity and future evolution.
  • Incremental backend evolution
    Implemented and refactored services step by step, avoiding large risky rewrites while still moving towards a cleaner, more modular structure.
  • Quantitative planning support
    Provided realistic estimates and technical input for planning, helping product and management understand trade-offs between scope, timing and risk.
  • Code quality & validation
    Used code reviews, testing and validation steps to keep regressions under control and detect integration issues early.
  • Process & tooling improvements
    Contributed to discussions on tools, practices and workflows (for example around version control, automation and monitoring) to make the development process more predictable and sustainable.

Results & impact

During my time at TicketSms, the backend and integration layer:

  • became more consistent and easier to extend for new features and external services,
  • improved in terms of reliability and clarity of responsibilities between components,
  • benefited from more structured technical evaluations before starting significant work,
  • and saw a stronger connection between product needs, technical feasibility and day-to-day development.

Beyond individual features, this experience reinforced my ability to work on live, high-traffic platforms, where architecture, code quality and process must all support continuous evolution without compromising stability.


Technologies & methods

  • Technologies: modern backend services exposing RESTful APIs, integrations with external web services, relational databases, caching and asynchronous processing, CI/CD and monitoring tools.
  • Methods: agile development, collaborative planning, code reviews, technical feasibility assessments, incremental refactoring.

Status & next steps

  • Current status: TicketSms continues to operate as a live event ticketing platform; the backend and integrations I contributed to are part of the foundation that supports ongoing evolution.
  • How this informs Integratia: This project is a concrete example of working inside a fast-moving digital product, balancing architecture, delivery and innovation. The lessons learned directly inform how Integratia approaches backend-heavy platforms, integrations and process optimisation for other clients.

Your interest

Working on a digital product with complex backend and integrations — or planning to build one?
Let’s talk about your context and see how the experience gained on platforms like TicketSms can help you evolve your architecture, processes and delivery.