Decision Triggers
Use for slow work
Operations taking more than a few seconds should return a job ID and process async.
Keep quick paths sync
Simple request/response flows do not need queue, worker, and status-tracking overhead.
Spot slow examples
Video transcoding, image processing, PDFs, bulk emails, CSV imports, and exports fit.
Do throughput math
Multiply job volume by per-job processing time before assigning work to web servers.
Split hardware needs
Run GPU, CPU-heavy, or memory-heavy work on worker fleets, not the web tier.
Budget complexity
Queues, workers, job states, retries, and monitoring replace simple request/response.