
IT professional with over 15 years of experience in software development, system architecture, security and infrastructure management.
Remote work evangelist based out of Croatia but happy to travel.
Skillset
- Current: Ansible, Python, Flask, Falcon, MySQL, Postgres, Jenkins, Phabricator, AWS
- Recent: Java, ObjC, Swift, Django, AMQP, Redis, Memcached, Go, Javascript, jQuery, HTML, CSS, Regexes
- History: PHP, PEAR, Bash, SVN, ASP, MSSQL, C/C++, C#, VB.Net
Experience
Noom
Head of Infrastructure and Site Reliability
September 2015 - PresentCleaned up tech debt accumulated over many years of fast paced development and several pivots.
Improved security, stability and performance of the production stack while ensuring a safe environment for developers to quickly iterate on code in. Shipped the first iteration of local development environments, dropping the dependency on VPN to the production network for development work.
Specced, pitched, prepared, coordinated and executed a massive migration of the entire production stack from Rackspace (hybrid cloud/bare metal) to AWS. Over 60 machines, dozens of interconnected webapps and services with a hefty 1+TB central database, all migrated with zero downtime for staff, clients or users. Shaved hosting cost in the process by 60%. (June - August 2017)
Designed and built a full self service backend hosting solution based on AWS ECS Fargate and Cloudformation. Lead project to containerize all legacy apps and democratize application resource provisioning and management. (2020-2021)
Sr. Software Engineer September 2015 - January 2016
SRE February 2016 - March 2017
Infrastructure Lead April 2017 - February 2021
Head of Infrastructure and Site Reliability March 2021 - Present
AwesomeForce
Founder
January 2019 - PresentFull service software development consultancy. List of references available on request.
Sekura Collective
Founder
December 2017 - PresentChaos management specialists and software development tooling & processes experts. Your rapid response team for critical infrastructural and architectural challenges.
With a combined century of professional experience across a wide range of specializations, this small hand-picked team quickly reduces problems of any complexity to manageable levels and delivers key in hand solutions ready for handoff to in-house or external maintenance teams.
List of references available on request.
Meetup
Engineering Lead - Payments/Triage
May 2018 - November 2018Managed a remote team of senior engineers in charge of all revenue-handling systems.
Helped define and spin up a triage team to tackle tech debt and maintenance, allowing other teams to focus on executing their technical roadmap and shipping meaningful product health milestones.
GamingBattleGround
Technical Advisor
December 2015 - November 2016Advised the development team on matters of performance, stability, security and best practices. Assisted with migration to a more resilient and scalable infrastructure setup using Heroku and Cloudflare.
Hitlist
CTO, co-founder
2013 - 2015Head of development and architecture. Owner of all things not frontend. SQL whisperer.
Tech: Django, PostgreSQL, Heroku, AMQP, Redis, Celery, Skyscanner, Facebook/FQL, Phonegap, AWS
deviantART, Inc.
Web Developer
2010 - 2013Worked on the entire deviantART web stack, from frontend to backend, internal tools and apps. Led several projects to refactor, optimize and secure core components of the website. Took ownership of the datamining service, stabilized, optimized and improved large portions of it. Led two projects to improve both UI and the underlying engine.
Hiring team member (Feb - Dec 2012)
Spam concerns liaison with Helpdesk, Community and Legal teams.
Public projects: MoreLikeThis, deviantWEAR contests, dA Muro
SCHED*
Lead Developer
2010Fixed and optimized many sections of a codebase showing considerable bit rot, successfully stabilized an unstable product for key events of the season.
Communicated directly with top clients to ensure proper functionality during critical times.
Pitched, specced, prototyped, and built a new generation of product, which would go on to become the core of the company's offering.
24sata digital d.o.o.
Senior web developer
2009 - 2010Primary responsibility was development of several in-house applications using Django and jQuery. Submitted patches to jQuery UI core.
Designeus Web Studio
Co-founder, Tech Lead
2004 - 2013Led numerous projects through to a successful launch, many for return customers. Built fully custom solutions for each client from scratch. Full portfolio at www.designeus.hr
SoundVault Ltd.
Lead Developer & Architect
2006-2009Developed a music shop for entertainment industry professionals, using PHP, PEAR and Smarty. Integrated PayPal and Google Checkout payment gateways, with a fully custom billing module. Developed an “import” application to allow suppliers to upload music and edit complex music metadata without administrator assistance. Includes mp3 transcoding and tag reading.
Talks
2022
- May 2022 - Shipping quality software in hostile environments - Rab Web Conference
- May 2022 - Stop rubbing strange lamps - Rab Web Conference
2021
- July 2021 - Shipping quality software in hostile environments - WeAreDevelopers World Congress Berlin
- June 2021 - "Remote" rad - prije i nakon pandemije - Gradska knjižnica Rijeka
2020
- September 2020 - The Platform Is Dead, Long Live The Platform - DevOpsCon London
- March 2020 - The Platform Is Dead, Long Live The Platform - Kubernetes and Cloud Native Computing Croatia
- February 2020 - The Platform Is Dead, Long Live The Platform - AWS User Group Sarajevo
- January 2020 - Shipping quality software in hostile environments - Chaos Engineering Conference Conf42 London
2019
- December 2019 - Shipping quality software in hostile environments - .debug Zagreb
- November 2019 - The other side of webapp security - DevFest Siberia 2019
- November 2019 - The Platform Is Dead, Long Live The Platform - DevFest Siberia 2019
- November 2019 - The Platform Is Dead, Long Live The Platform - Init 2019 Dev Conference Banja Luka
- October 2019 - From chaos to quality - Agile Humans Day Belgrade
- October 2019 - The Platform Is Dead, Long Live The Platform - Webcamp Zagreb
- October 2019 - The Platform Is Dead, Long Live The Platform - Adriatic AWS Innovation Days 2019
- September 2019 - Shipping quality software in hostile environments - KulenDayz Osijek
- May 2019 - Tech Bankruptcy - PyConWeb Munich
- May 2019 - Geo-distributed Development Teams in Practice - DUMP Days Split 2019
- March 2019 - Tech Bankruptcy - ZgPHP Meetup
- February 2019 - Tech Bankruptcy - Banja Luka Dev Meetup
2018
- December 2018 - Tech Bankruptcy - GrowIT 2018 Novi Sad slides
- November 2018 - Shipping quality software in hostile environments - PyCon Balkan 2018 slides
- October 2018 - The other side of webapp security - WebCamp Zagreb slides / video
- March 2018 - Phabricator - what's it do? - ZgPHP slides
- January 2018 - Zero Downtime Datacenter Failovers AKA Changing Hosting Providers For Dummies - Python Belgrade slides / video
2017
- December 2017 - Don't get pwned in 2018 - webapp lockdown checklist - Dev StackUp NYC (Security) slides
- October 2017 - Zero Downtime Datacenter Failovers AKA Changing Hosting Providers For Dummies - AWSAdria 2017 slides
- September 2017 - Zero Downtime Datacenter Failovers AKA Changing Hosting Providers For Dummies - Infinum Server-Side Talks slides
- May 2017 - Geo-distributed Development Teams in Practice - Drupal Heart Camp Zagreb slides / video
2016
- December 2016 - "Freelancing", a crash course - DevUG Karlovac
- October 2016 - Security in the age of web frameworks - WebCamp Zagreb
- September 2016 - Security in the age of web frameworks - FSec 2016, Varazdin slides / video
- April 2016 - The importance of being a noob - Web Designers Hrvatska meetup, Zagreb
- March 2016 - The importance of being a noob - WebCamp Ljubljana slides / video
2014
- October 2014 - Bad ideas & worst practices - WebCamp Zagreb, Zagreb slides
- May 2014 - Hitlist and Heroku - Pytalks, Zagreb slides
2013
2012
- November 2012 – Geo-distributed development teams – WebCamp Zagreb - slides / video
- October 2012 – LAMP Scaling 101 – ZgPHP User Group slides / video
- April 2012 - What’s new in PHP 5.4 – ZgPHP User Group
- January 2012 – Development at scale – ZgPHP User Group
2011
- November 2011 – Automated spam on the Web – Web User Group Zagreb
2010
Awards & Honors
- October 2019 – .debug Zagreb Content Committee
- October 2019 – PyCon Balkan 2019 Content Committee
- November 2018 – PyCon Balkan 2018 Keynote
- November 2018 – PyCon Balkan 2018 Content Committee
Publications
- June 2011 – Faving spam countermeasures on deviantART