The Estée Lauder Companies
Led architecture and engineering for B2C chat systems across ~300 global brand websites. Responsibilities included feature development, platform modernization, and cross-team coordination.
Case Study Details
Challenge
Scale and maintain chat infrastructure serving hundreds of global beauty brand websites while modernizing legacy systems and coordinating across distributed teams.
Solution
Architected Elixir/Phoenix services powering chat, online appointment booking, store locator systems, and centralized back-office management with robust configuration systems.
Results
Delivered a modern, centrally controlled platform reducing engineering costs and improving global reliability. Accelerated development cycles and established clearer architectural direction across business units. Enhanced booking experience consistency while reducing engineering friction for brand teams.
Technologies Used
Elixir
A functional programming language built for scalability and fault tolerance on the Erlang VM.
We use Elixir because it handles millions of concurrent connections while remaining maintainable and joyful to write.
Phoenix
A web framework that delivers incredible performance without sacrificing developer productivity.
We use Phoenix because it gives us real-time capabilities out of the box and scales effortlessly from prototype to production.
TypeScript
JavaScript with static types that catch errors before they reach production.
We use TypeScript because type safety at scale prevents entire categories of bugs and makes refactoring fearless.
AWS
Amazon's cloud platform offering virtually unlimited scale and global reach.
We use AWS when projects need enterprise-grade infrastructure, compliance certifications, or specific managed services.
Project Details
As Technical Lead for global B2C chat systems, Sundragon architects and leads the engineering foundation supporting nearly 300 brand websites across Estée Lauder's luxury portfolio. The position bridges engineering execution with enterprise leadership, spanning ~30 brands and multiple global markets.
Global Chat Systems Architecture Lead engineer overseeing centralized chat solutions unifying B2C interactions across the brand ecosystem. Drives technical strategy for consolidating legacy, per-brand implementations into a single scalable platform. Manages feature development, architecture improvements, sprint planning, and production issue resolution.
Elixir & Phoenix Backend Development The core technical work centers on improving ELC's backend services using Elixir and Phoenix frameworks. These systems support chat experience orchestration, online appointment booking workflows, store locator and search data pipelines, and global configurations with brand-specific logic. Contributions include designing new Phoenix modules, refactoring legacy services, optimizing performance for global traffic, and improving developer tooling and documentation.
Online Appointment Booking Primary engineering responsibilities include enhancing Phoenix controllers and routers, introducing maintainable tenant-level customization patterns, supporting SEO and UX requirements, and managing major brand rollouts.
Store Locator System Accountability extends to fixing data inconsistencies, improving search behaviors, supporting integrations across Drupal and Next.js clients, and replacing brittle legacy patterns with reliable, tested logic.
Back-Office Configuration Platform Designed a central back-office application enabling brand stakeholders to configure chat features, adjust market-specific settings, manage global rollouts, and control system behavior without engineering intervention.
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