Connect the Dots: The Infrastructure Integration Challenge

About the Competition: Connect the Dots is a hands-on infrastructure and system design challenge focused on system integration and operational engineering. Participants will work with multiple isolated backend services and design an infrastructure architecture that integrates them into a unified system. The competition emphasizes real-world engineering skills such as routing architecture, load distribution, container orchestration, debugging, and cost-aware infrastructure management. Objective: Integrate & Configure Design the architecture that connects multiple independent infrastructure services. Implement solutions such as reverse proxying, load balancing, and secure service-to-service communication. Achieve System Reliability Ensure the architecture passes a complete set of automated end-to-end integration tests. Optimize for Cloud Economics Build the infrastructure within strict cost and resource constraints. Demonstrate understanding of cost-efficient cloud resource management (FinOps). Defend Architectural Decisions Provide clear reasoning for architectural design, infrastructure configuration, and cost optimization strategies. Submission Guidelines: All submissions must be made through a Git repository (GitHub, GitLab, etc.). The repository must follow infrastructure-as-code or configuration management best practices. Source Configuration Include all configuration files, manifests, and scripts required to provision the infrastructure. Comprehensive README.md Provide a step-by-step deployment guide explaining how to set up the infrastructure from scratch. Dependency Management Clearly define versions for runtimes, orchestration tools, and external services required for execution. Environment Configuration Provide a .env.sample or .env.example file outlining required environment variables. Do not include actual secrets or credentials in the repository. Engineering Justification Report Include a structured document explaining: Architectural topology Routing and infrastructure decisions Resource allocation limits Cost optimization approach.