API Gateway & Microservices (Kong/Envoy + gRPC + Kubernetes + Go) overview

A microservices architecture with Kong or Envoy as the API gateway handling routing, rate limiting, authentication, and observability at the edge; gRPC for strongly-typed inter-service communication with Protocol Buffers; Kubernetes for container orchestration; PostgreSQL for per-service data stores; and Go as the primary service language. The gateway centralizes cross-cutting concerns (TLS termination, JWT validation, request transformation) so individual services remain focused on business logic. gRPC provides efficient binary serialization, bidirectional streaming, and automatic client/server code generation. Kubernetes handles service discovery, scaling, and health management. OpenTelemetry instruments distributed traces across service boundaries. This stack suits organizations breaking a monolith into services or building platform APIs consumed by multiple teams. The primary tradeoff is operational complexity: service mesh, distributed tracing, and per-service databases require mature DevOps practices.