How long did this whole platform rebuild take, from architecture to launch?

The entire build — video infrastructure, authentication, mobile apps, LMS core, and global CDN rollout — shipped in 4 months, timed to a hard funding-round demo milestone. A CI/CD-driven weekly sprint cadence with demo checkpoints kept scope on track so nothing had to be cut at the deadline.

What if a client doesn't have in-house mobile engineering, like this founding team?

That was exactly this client's situation — no mobile team and a four-month deadline. SystimaNX built the React Native iOS and Android apps from scratch within that window, including offline video download and encrypted local storage, so the client didn't need to hire or ramp up a mobile team to compete with established EdTech players.

Does this approach work for smaller cohorts, or was it built only for large corporate rollouts?

The architecture — Redis caching, read replicas, autoscaling, and RBAC — was load-tested against 3x the expected concurrent enrollment specifically because the client needed to onboard several large corporate cohorts on the same day. The same foundation scales down cleanly for smaller cohorts or self-paced learners without the correlated-burst risk that drove the original design.

What was the biggest technical risk in this project, and how was it addressed?

The biggest risk was correlated traffic bursts: multiple large corporate cohorts starting the same module on the same day against a single-region database with no read replica strategy. SystimaNX introduced Redis-backed caching, read replicas, and autoscaling ahead of the largest planned launches, and load-tested at 3x expected concurrency before go-live to de-risk that scenario.

Back to case studies

EdTech & Online LearningSaaS Application DevelopmentDevOps Consulting

Scalable AI Education Platform

Architecting a production-grade EdTech platform for AI literacy courses at global scale, built to carry a growing catalog of live cohorts and self-paced tracks without buckling under launch-week traffic.

Multi-region learning platform serving thousands of concurrent learners

Client

Confidential — EdTech startup

Industry

EdTech & Online Learning

Timeline

4 months

Technologies

8+ tools

The Challenge

!The client's existing video infrastructure was built for pre-recorded content only, and it could not support simultaneous live cohort sessions and on-demand replay viewing once enrollment crossed a few hundred concurrent learners. Live classes routinely stalled or dropped mid-session, forcing instructors to restart streams and re-explain material.

!Authentication was a patchwork of ad hoc session tokens with no formal role separation between students, instructors, and admins. Instructors could accidentally see admin billing data, and there was no clean way to revoke a compromised account without logging out the entire platform.

!A large share of the target audience learned from mobile devices on inconsistent 3G/4G connections in Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America, and the existing player had no adaptive bitrate logic. Learners on weaker connections faced constant buffering, which was the single largest driver of course drop-off in the client's own usage data.

!Progress tracking and certificate issuance were handled by a brittle spreadsheet-export process with no immutable audit trail, which made it impossible to prove completion dates or certificate authenticity to corporate learning partners requiring compliance documentation.

!Content delivery latency varied wildly by region: origin servers sat in a single US data center, so learners in Asia and parts of Europe experienced multi-second load delays before every video segment, undermining the platform's positioning as a premium global course provider.

!The client's launch plan called for onboarding several large corporate cohorts simultaneously, each with hundreds of learners starting the same module on the same day, and the existing single-region database had no read replica strategy to absorb that kind of correlated burst traffic.

!There was no dedicated admin tooling for course managers to see cohort-level engagement, so instructors had no early warning when a cohort's completion rate was falling behind schedule, and support staff had to query the production database directly to answer basic user questions.

!The founding team needed to ship a mobile app to compete with established EdTech players, but had no in-house mobile engineering capacity and a hard four-month deadline tied to a funding-round demo milestone.

Our Solution

Designed a multi-CDN video delivery architecture that combined AWS CloudFront with a secondary CDN failover path, using HLS packaging with adaptive bitrate rungs tuned specifically for the 3G/4G conditions common in the client's target markets.

Rebuilt authentication from the ground up with JWT access tokens, rotating refresh tokens, and a formal RBAC model covering three tiers — student, instructor, and admin — with granular permission scopes so an instructor account could never reach billing or platform-configuration endpoints.

Developed native-feeling React Native apps for iOS and Android within the four-month window, including offline video download and encrypted local storage so learners could complete modules without a live connection and sync progress once back online.

Built an LMS core from scratch with append-only progress event logging, so every module completion, quiz score, and certificate issuance was tied to an immutable, timestamped record suitable for compliance audits by corporate learning partners.

Deployed geographically distributed edge nodes across North America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific, cutting the origin-to-viewer hop for the majority of the client's user base and bringing time-to-first-frame under two seconds regardless of region.

Introduced Redis-backed caching and read replicas ahead of the largest planned cohort launches, load-tested against 3x the expected concurrent enrollment, and set up autoscaling rules so the platform absorbed correlated cohort-start traffic without manual intervention.

Built an admin dashboard giving course managers real-time visibility into cohort completion rates, quiz performance distributions, and at-risk learners, plus self-service tools so support staff could resolve common account issues without touching the production database.

Ran the entire build as a tightly scoped, CI/CD-driven sprint cadence with weekly demo checkpoints, which let the founding team show working increments to investors ahead of the final launch and catch scope risks early rather than at the four-month deadline.

Measurable Impact

Concurrent learners

Thousands (3x expected peak enrollment, load-tested)

The platform absorbed live and on-demand peak loads from multiple simultaneous corporate cohort launches without service degradation.

Video load time

< 2 seconds

Adaptive bitrate streaming held sub-2-second time-to-first-frame across 3G, 4G, and broadband connections alike.

Mobile completion rate

2x desktop

Offline download capability removed the connectivity barrier that had been the platform's top cause of learner drop-off.

Content delivery

Global, 4 continents

Edge CDN coverage brought consistent low-latency delivery to learners in Asia, Europe, and the Americas alike.

Time to launch

4 months

Full platform, mobile apps, and LMS core shipped inside a hard funding-milestone deadline with no scope cuts.

Support ticket volume

50-60% reduction

Self-service admin tooling let support staff resolve most account and progress issues without engineering escalation.

Compliance readiness

100% of completions audit-traceable

Immutable progress logging gave corporate learning partners verifiable completion and certificate records on demand.

“We launched to thousands of users on day one without any infrastructure issues, even with multiple corporate cohorts starting the same module simultaneously. SystimaNX gave us a platform we can grow into, not just one that works today, and the mobile offline capability alone changed our completion numbers overnight.”
C
CTO
AI EdTech Platform (NDA)

Technology stack

React NativeNext.jsNode.jsPostgreSQLAWS CloudFrontS3HLSRedis