Viyahe / Monark
Owned the backend and cloud side of trials.gg end to end, from architecture to launch.
About the company
Viyahe PH is a chat-based travel booking and assistance platform that connects users with live travel agents through a mobile app for flight bookings. As the company evolved, its focus shifted to a new venture.
Monark builds trials.gg, a challenge-based reward system for competitive gamers: players complete in-game challenges, progress is computed from a stream of gameplay events, and rewards are paid out on completion. The engineering team was small, fully remote, and maintained a fast development cadence, shipping new features and improvements approximately five times a week.
My journey there
I joined Viyahe as a Platform Software Engineer, initially working on the B2B platform. One of the first technical challenges I encountered was transitioning from relational databases to DynamoDB. It required a shift in how I approached data modeling, and it became one of the most valuable learning experiences early in my time with the company.
When development began on trials.gg, I joined the core engineering team and remained with the project through its production launch. I owned the backend and cloud infrastructure end to end, from designing the initial architecture to building deployment pipelines, implementing data analytics, managing cloud infrastructure, and supporting production operations after launch.
As the team evolved, I also contributed beyond my primary role. Between 2023 and 2024, I supported frontend development whenever additional engineering capacity was needed, allowing the team to continue delivering features at a rapid pace.
PGDX Manila 2024
One of the highlights of my time at Monark was participating in PGDX Manila 2024, where we introduced trials.gg to the local gaming community. We welcomed more than 900 new sign-ups, invited attendees to complete League of Legends challenges for rewards, and saw our Discord community grow by hundreds of new members. It was rewarding to see months of engineering work come alive through direct interaction with players and receive immediate feedback from the community.
Closing thoughts
Viyahe/Monark is a great company that I am proud to be part of, and undoubltedly a professional highlight; I learned so much from the team and experience. It was there where I learned to plan system architecture with a cost-effective solutions. I’ve able to craft my skills and learn new technologies along the way.
Working on a small engineering team taught me how to balance architecture with practical business constraints. I learned to design systems with scalability and cost efficiency in mind, build reliable cloud infrastructure, and take ownership of services from design through production. It also strengthened my ability to adapt, whether that meant learning unfamiliar technologies or contributing outside my primary area of expertise.
The experience was equally meaningful on a personal level. Although we worked remotely, I had the opportunity to meet the team in person during a trip to Manila. I was already visiting to celebrate a close friend who had passed the Architecture Licensure Examination (ALE), so I took the opportunity to visit the office as well. We spent time exploring Binondo, sharing great food, singing karaoke, and later gathered again at the office for samgyupsal and drinks. Those moments reminded me that strong teams are built not only through collaboration, but also through genuine relationships.
I’m grateful for the opportunity to have worked alongside such talented people, especially Pat Ambrosio, CTIO and owner of Posture Atelier (formerly Next Keyboard Club).
Before joining Viyahe, I only knew Pat through the Tambayan 404 Discord community. He once gave me career advice that stayed with me, and sometime later I came across one of his job postings. I applied, joined the team, and that decision became one of the most rewarding steps in my career.
