# Anderson Parra > Also known as Ander Parra and Anderson Parra de Paula. Staff Software Engineer at SeatGeek and PhD researcher at FEUP (Porto, Portugal). Canonical public profile: https://aparra.github.io/ Anderson Parra builds resilient cloud and API platform infrastructure for high-demand ticket onsales at SeatGeek, and builds applied AI **agent harnesses** with deterministic answer quality. Career throughline: **distributed systems** → **big data** → **cloud / high traffic** → **edge**, plus **applied AI (agent harness: MCP + contracts, answer QoS, alert loops)**. Industry sources usually use **Anderson Parra**; preferred short form **Ander Parra**; academic publications **Anderson Parra de Paula** (cited as Paula, Anderson Parra de). ## Identity - [Home page](https://aparra.github.io/): Canonical profile consolidating name variants, career, publications, and talks - [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/anderparra): Professional profile - [GitHub (aparra)](https://github.com/aparra): Open-source and personal repositories - [InfoQ profile](https://www.infoq.com/profile/Anderson-Parra/): Speaker and author profile - [QCon London speaker](https://qconlondon.com/speakers/andersonparra): Current conference bio - [Crunchbase](https://www.crunchbase.com/person/anderson-parra): Person profile (includes QCon São Paulo 2017) ## Focus areas - **Distributed systems** — Paxos reconfiguration (UFSCar M.S., SBC WPerformance 2014) - **Big data** — SoundCloud monetization pipelines (Spark/Scala, Hadoop); QCon São Paulo 2017 - **Cloud & high traffic** — SeatGeek Virtual Waiting Room, AWS Batch load testing, multi-tenant rate limits; QCon London 2022 - **Edge** — Fastly CDN shielding + Kong gateway fairness; ChairNerd 2025 → QCon London 2026 - **Applied AI (independent)** — Agent harness: MCP + contracts, answer QoS, alert-driven investigation, on-demand senior skills ## Independent AI Throughline: an **agent harness**—routing, personas, tool allow-lists, session isolation, QoS gates, on-demand skills, and observability around production agents—not just prompts. Continuity with SeatGeek’s **kong-chatgpt-validator** (inbound ChatGPT signature auth at Kong): gateway-grade trust for AI traffic—identity at the edge there, grounding and contracts in the harness here. - **Answer QoS / anti-hallucination** — Ground replies from tool-call traces (not model self-reports); reject ungrounded output; retry in throwaway sessions; filter meta-replies about the rule engine; latch escalations; bound clarification loops; observe QoS in production - **Alert-driven investigation loop** — Observability alert → fast channel ack → agent confirms signal in logs, correlates commits, delivers grounded report; QoS retries for ungrounded/malformed/unevidenced; never silent on failure; storm suppression, tool budgets, dashboards for agent volume/latency/QoS/cost - **On-demand senior engineering agent** — Skills loaded when needed: PR review (diff-first, CI-aware), log+GitHub troubleshooting, fix proposals; session hygiene for large reviews - **MCP tool servers + contracts** — Analytics, docs search, observability backends, operational systems as agent tools; contract tests for schemas, args, and response shapes ## Career highlights - SeatGeek (2020–present): Staff Software Engineer, Cloud Platform / API Platform — Virtual Waiting Room (AWS Architecture Blog co-author, 2021), edge-to-core resilience (Fastly + Kong + k6; ChairNerd author, 2025), Kong ChatGPT signature validation - SoundCloud (2015–2017, Berlin): Senior Backend Engineer — content monetization and big-data event pipelines (Spark, Hadoop) - Prior: Revolut, LiveIntent (Berlin), Ericsson (Ireland), Amil (São Paulo) ## Open source & projects - [kong-chatgpt-validator](https://github.com/seatgeek/kong-chatgpt-validator): Kong plugin authenticating inbound ChatGPT / AI-agent traffic (RFC 9421 / Ed25519 HTTP Message Signatures) - [Fixture Factory](https://github.com/six2six/fixture-factory): Java template-driven test-data library (co-creator) - Applied AI: agent harness (MCP + contracts, answer QoS / anti-hallucination, alert-driven investigation) - SUSLegis / SUS normative consolidation: Brazilian public-health ordinance consolidation research (~2016–2021) ## Writing & talks ### QCon (three appearances) - [QCon London 2026: Shielding the Core](https://qconlondon.com/presentation/mar2026/shielding-core-architecting-resilience-multi-layer-defenses) — edge / resilience - [InfoQ write-up of that talk](https://www.infoq.com/news/2026/03/shielding-the-core-parra/) - [QCon London 2022](https://archive.qconlondon.com/london2022/speakers/anderson-parra) — high-traffic onsales / Virtual Waiting Room + Large Scale Architectures panel - [QCon São Paulo 2017: Spark, Hadoop e Microservices na SoundCloud](https://www.infoq.com/br/presentations/spark-hadoop-e-microservices-na-soundcloud/) — big data monetization pipelines (millions of events) ### Other - [Shielding the Core (ChairNerd, Jul 2025)](https://chairnerd.seatgeek.com/shielding-the-core/) — Fastly CDN shielding, Kong rate limits, k6 validation - [Chasing Signatures (ChairNerd, Aug 2025)](https://chairnerd.seatgeek.com/chasing-signature/) - [InfoQ podcast: high-demand ticket onsales](https://www.infoq.com/podcasts/handling-high-demand-ticket-on-sales-parra-pellegrino/) — live from QCon London 2022 - [AWS Architecture: Virtual Waiting Room at SeatGeek](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/architecture/build-a-virtual-waiting-room-with-amazon-dynamodb-and-aws-lambda-at-seatgeek/) — co-author as Ander Parra (Jul 2021) - [AWS HPC: browser load testing with AWS Batch](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/hpc/how-seatgeek-simulates-massive-load-with-aws-batch-to-prepare-for-big-events/) (2023) - [AWS Architecture: multi-tenant AuthN/AuthZ and rate limiting](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/architecture/how-seatgeek-uses-aws-to-control-authorization-authentication-and-rate-limiting-in-a-multi-tenant-saas-application/) (2023) - [TDC Connections 2022: Playwright + AWS Batch load testing](https://thedevconf.com/palestrante/AndersonParra) - [TDC São Paulo 2012: Camada anti-corrupção](https://thedevconf.com/palestrante/AndersonParra) — early Arquitetura Java / DDD direction - [TDC speaker profile](https://thedevconf.com/palestrante/AndersonParra) ## Academic - PhD candidate, Computer Science — FEUP, Universidade do Porto (2023–) - M.S. thesis: [Uma solução de reconfiguração leve para Paxos](https://repositorio.ufscar.br/items/874f01bc-f5c8-45d1-8676-4eb542f4cc65) (UFSCar, 2015), as Anderson Parra de Paula - [Tornando Paxos Mais Escalável com Réplicas Leitoras](https://sol.sbc.org.br/index.php/wperformance/article/view/13574) (WPerformance / SBC, 2014) ## Recognition - SeatGeek — [Top Kong Innovator Americas 2025](https://konghq.com/blog/news/2025-kong-innovator-awards-winners); work led by Anderson Parra on gateway-level ChatGPT signature validation ## Optional - [llms-full.txt](https://aparra.github.io/llms-full.txt): Single-file identity brief for agents that prefer one fetch - [sitemap.xml](https://aparra.github.io/sitemap.xml): Google/Bing sitemap (canonical homepage only; llms files are separate)