WINCH · Saudi logistics platform

Overview

WINCH is a Saudi logistics platform for moving goods and vehicles, renting trucks and storing goods. Businesses, carriers, drivers and WINCH's own teams each have an app or dashboard, all served by one back end. I joined in 2023 as a senior software engineer.

The problem

When I joined, the back end ran WINCH's own operations, but four things were missing.

• No business or carrier platform. Neither had apps, dashboards or APIs of their own.
• No structure that could grow. Most code lived in one folder, so every change touched too much.
• Core features solved again and again. Each feature handled notifications, exports and security its own way.
• No common way to integrate. Each outside platform was wired in differently, with no record of the calls.

The solution

The business and carrier platforms. Businesses and carriers now have their own APIs, apps and dashboards on the same back end.

Domains that stay clean. The team and I moved the back end into more than 50 domains, each behind a contract.

Core features as generic engines. Notifications, exports and security are each one engine that every feature uses.

One engine for every integration. Every outside platform is an app, configured in one place and recorded call by call.

What I did

• Set up the business and carrier platforms and their APIs, and have written most of the business dashboard.
• Designed and built the notification system, the security domain, the integration engine and the foundation of the export system.
• Evolved the Domain-Driven Design structure and led the move of the legacy code into it, mentoring the team along the way.
• Proposed the shared UI package both dashboards use, led its extraction and maintain it.
• Set up the team's AI-assisted workflow: the rules, agents and skills that AI coding agents follow.
• Lead small teams that take features to production, and review the pull requests that keep the structure consistent.

What it offers

• Orders from request to deliveryCreate orders one by one or from a spreadsheet, and follow each in real time.
• Clear pricingQuotations or fixed prices, with every trip's cost broken down.
• Government paperwork built inElectronic waybills, driving authorisations and e-invoices to ZATCA's standard.
• Carrier operationsCarriers assign drivers and vehicles and follow every trip.
• Earnings and financeStatements, compensation requests, and wallet top-ups and withdrawals.
• An API for businessesCompanies connect their ERP and other systems to WINCH.

System design

One back end serves every app through its own API, on top of the domains and four shared components. Queues and a scheduler run the heavy and recurring work.

The business and carrier platforms

Both dashboards share one codebase and UI package, so a fix or a new component reaches both products at once.

Moving to Domain-Driven Design

Every domain has the same layers and a contract as its only public door, so one team can change a domain without breaking another. The team moved the legacy code domain by domain without pausing the product.

Notifications, exports and security

Each is one engine that every feature uses: a new message is a template, a new export only describes its columns, and every kind of user signs in through the same security domain.

The integration engine

The team writes each integration, such as ZATCA, as a small app with its own settings and limits. Every call is recorded, and an app can be switched off without changing code.

AI in the engineering workflow

I set up the rules, agents and skills so the whole team can work with AI coding agents without losing the structure we built.

What it changed

• New features start in the right shape, because the scaffold follows the structure the team reviews against.
• Reviews focus on design and behaviour, because structure and formatting are checked first.
• New engineers learn the codebase from the same rules the agents follow.