Computer science student excel in backend development

karthik Narravula  • Peerlist

Built a full-stack real-time chat application with Spring Boot, React, WebSockets, PostgreSQL, Docker, and AWS. The project supports private real-time messaging, JWT authentication, online/offline presence tracking, read receipts, conversation history, and responsive chat UI updates using WebSockets + STOMP. I deployed the backend on AWS EC2 using Docker and configured Nginx as a reverse proxy with HTTPS and custom domains. I also set up a CI/CD pipeline using GitHub Actions to automatically build, push, and deploy new Docker images to production after every backend change. This project taught me a lot beyond just writing backend code — especially debugging production deployment issues, handling environment variables securely, fixing Docker architecture mismatches, configuring reverse proxies, and automating deployments. Tech Stack: Spring Boot, Spring Security, WebSockets, JWT, PostgreSQL, React, Docker, AWS EC2, AWS RDS, Nginx, GitHub Actions