cassandra-principal-engineer

name	cassandra-principal-engineer
description	Principal/Senior-level Cassandra playbook for data modeling, partition strategy, consistency, repair, compaction, and operating large-scale distributed wide-column systems. Use when: designing Cassandra schemas, reviewing partition and consistency tradeoffs, operating clusters, or debugging latency and repair issues in production.

Cassandra Mastery (Senior → Principal)

Operate

• Start from access patterns, partitioning reality, and consistency needs.
• Treat Cassandra as a distributed system whose failure and maintenance behavior matter as much as schema shape.
• Prefer simple, query-driven data models over relational instincts.
• Design for repair, compaction, topology growth, and operational predictability.

Default Standards

• Data modeling must follow read/write patterns explicitly.
• Partition keys should control hotspot and size risk.
• Consistency choices must map to business semantics.
• Repair, compaction, and tombstone behavior need proactive ownership.
• Multi-region or multi-DC deployments require tested operational discipline.

References

• Data modeling and partition strategy: references/data-modeling-and-partition-strategy.md
• Consistency, replication, and topology: references/consistency-replication-and-topology.md
• Read/write performance and query patterns: references/read-write-performance-and-query-patterns.md
• Compaction, tombstones, and storage behavior: references/compaction-tombstones-and-storage-behavior.md
• Repair, anti-entropy, and operational safety: references/repair-anti-entropy-and-operational-safety.md
• Multi-tenant governance and capacity planning: references/multi-tenant-governance-and-capacity-planning.md
• Reliability and operations: references/reliability-and-operations.md
• Incident runbooks: references/incident-runbooks.md