- Jun 21, 2023
- 3 min read
Updated: May 1, 2024
When our CEO saw how long it was taking to get a small project to the finish line, he knew something had to change. Enter Alex Pinsky and the Platform Engineering group, who created NIie: our very own game-changing backend framework for building microservices
I’m Alex, and I lead the Platform Engineering group, which focuses on making the workday easier for our developers. Currently, our main project is called Nile: our own backend framework for building microservices. It's a game-changer, streamlining the way our developers work.
Nile? What’s Nile?
Imagine a Lego set that our backend engineers at Wix use to build their systems. That’s Nile. In tech terms, Nile provides our engineers everything they need to create a top-notch microservice that includes all Wix requirements. This way, they can concentrate on what matters most - their specific business area and delivering value to our customers.
How it all started
It all started when our CEO, Avishai Abrahami, couldn't wrap his head around why a project, offering no immediate value to users in its initial milestone, was predicted to take a long time due to the long checklist for creating a service at Wix: GDPR compliance, platformization guidelines (making sure our APIs at Wix are uniform), authorization & authentication, sending business events, and the list goes on.
To address this, we set up a special team, which included the Backend guild’s CTO and the Head of Backend at Wix. They got together with the developers to pinpoint all repetitive tasks and boilerplate code that was taking up developers' time. This helped them identify what we call the “paved road” - where developers spend 80% of their time. The goal was to make things flow effortlessly along this road with as little overhead as possible.
Thanks to their hard work, we created the first version of Nile- a new framework for streamlined services at Wix. It turned out to be a game-changer, reducing the time it took to get a new service up and running, with all of Wix's requirements included, from weeks to just a few days.
New framework - and a whole new mindset
Today, we have 6 teams all working on Nile, including an incredible product team. This is because we treat our platform as a product and see our Wix developers as our customers - which has been instrumental in the project's significant impact.
Nile has turned into a big deal for Wix. Today, it's not just the go-to framework for backend services at Wix, but all of our old services are actively moving over to it. This switch is helping us innovate faster by bringing new features into Nile and making it available to all product lines. For example, it's been a big help with our Open Platform initiative, where 3rd party developers and apps can extend our products and offerings while fitting smoothly into the existing business flows.
What’s next?
We’re proud to say the Nile has become a consensus at Wix. Backend developers, product managers, R&D managers, the Legal & Security teams - they all see the benefits of having a central framework that covers all best practices. And we’re even prouder to say that we have some pretty mind-blowing plans for the future!
This commitment to constant innovation aligns directly with Wix's operational ethos. We place significant emphasis on pioneering ideas to maintain our productivity levels and pace of innovation. To quote our CEO: "A product company’s success has a direct correlation with the speed of development - if we don't evolve faster than our competition, we risk falling behind."
It's always interesting to read about how technology can change the way people work behind the scenes. Improvements to tools, workflows, and infrastructure often have a bigger impact than most users realize, making experiences smoother and more reliable.
The same focus on usability can be seen in mobile https://dk222games.com.pk/dk222-game-download/ gaming and app communities, where users appreciate clear instructions and simple onboarding when trying new platforms or features. Easy-to-follow guidance helps people spend more time enjoying the experience and less time figuring out how things work.
Whether it's backend development or mobile apps, thoughtful design and accessibility are often what make a platform successful in the long run.
Really loved this breakdown! As a developer who frequently builds media-heavy tools, I always worry about infrastructure bottlenecks. For instance, trying to Compress Video or handle massive file uploads at scale can absolutely tank backend performance if your architecture isn't highly optimized. Your point about platform engineering freeing up engineers to focus entirely on business logic completely resonates with me. It’s inspiring to see how Wix manages this level of scale while maintaining dev velocity. Thanks for the great read!
The “paved road” framing is the most practical part here, especially the point about finding where developers spend 80% of their time before building Nile around that path. I explore Learned About Listening People and found parallel challenges. How did the team decide which requirements belonged inside the framework by default versus staying as optional choices for individual service teams?
The part about treating the platform as a product stood out to me, especially because the developers are explicitly framed as the customers. I explore Listening People and found parallel challenges. When Nile moved service setup from weeks to a few days, did the team measure whether that speed also reduced long-term maintenance issues, or was the main metric time-to-first-service?
This is awesome! Making development easier is so important. It reminds me of how cool it is when tools can simplify complex tasks, like how a photo editor ai can make editing pictures super fast and easy for anyone!