Production Browser Automation & Integration Platform

External business systems offered different ways to integrate. APIs were used where they could support the workflow; other cases required authenticated browser interaction, persistent session state, security prompts, and occasional human intervention.

The engineering problem was not simply launching Chrome processes. It was operating API and browser-based workflows over long periods while keeping authentication, process state, failures, recovery, and operational support manageable.

• Authenticated workflows could include passwords, multi-step login states, 2FA, PIN or security prompts, and human intervention.
• Service restarts could not automatically destroy valid running browser sessions.
• Multiple concurrent sessions required isolated profiles, explicit ownership, proxy allocation where needed, and per-session remote-debugging endpoints.

• Led the technical evolution of the back-end and browser-automation architecture while remaining hands-on with critical implementation.
• Owned integration design, browser-lifecycle decisions, reliability patterns, technical reviews, and production-readiness validation.
• Designed the separation between platform-specific workflow logic and the dedicated service responsible for browser ownership, state, and lifecycle.

• Maintaining authentication continuity across cookies, local storage, open tabs, and other session state held inside isolated profiles and long-running Chrome processes.
• Maintaining explicit ownership for multiple isolated sessions, including profile paths, allocated proxies where required, debugging ports, and expiry metadata.
• Supporting remote session viewing and inspection when workflows required operational support or human intervention.
• Reattaching automation to an existing long-running browser through its remote-debugging endpoint after the management service restarted.
• Distinguishing stale session metadata or processes from valid running sessions during cleanup and recovery.

• Separated workflow orchestration, platform-specific automation, and browser lifecycle responsibilities. Puppeteer or Playwright could be used where a workflow required them without making either library the browser-management boundary.
• Used per-session remote-debugging endpoints and Chrome DevTools Protocol control to reconnect automation to existing sessions without coupling each task to the lifetime of a browser process.
• Persisted browser and session metadata separately from process lifetime so the management service could recover operational knowledge after restart and make explicit cleanup decisions.

• Retries, timeouts, validation, safe reruns, and recoverable failure paths.
• Persisted browser/session metadata and structured logs kept operational state available for recovery, inspection, and support.
• Stale browser cleanup without treating every service restart as authority to terminate valid sessions.

• A platform that could use APIs or controlled browser sessions according to each external workflow's integration capabilities, with explicit browser ownership, persisted session knowledge, recovery behavior, and support for remote inspection.