How We Engineered a Scalable Architecture to Power Videos, Social, and Picks in Our Delivery App
Article Summary
Victoria Perelló and Hernán Malatini from Glovo shipped three major social features in 90 days—without breaking their app. Their secret? An architecture that let 10+ teams work in parallel without stepping on each other's toes.
Glovo's engineering team needed to add Videos, Social recommendations, and Picks (user-curated store lists) to their delivery app's Store Wall. The challenge: deliver all three features simultaneously across multiple teams while maintaining app stability and performance for millions of users.
Key Takeaways
- Plugin-based architecture allowed 10+ teams to develop features independently in parallel
- Server-driven UI components enabled reuse across modules without frontend dependencies
- Orchestrator engine executes modules in parallel, with latency dictated by slowest module only
- Data provider proxy pattern fetches shared data once per request, eliminating redundant calls
- Non-critical module failures are silently ignored to prevent breaking the entire screen
Critical Insight
A modular, plugin-based architecture with server-driven components enabled Glovo to ship three complex social features in 90 days while maintaining stability and allowing independent team velocity.
