Gniewomir Świechowski

Executive Summary

  • 14 years of commercial experience
  • Remote or non-mandatory hybrid in Cracow
  • TypeScript, JavaScript, PHP, Python
  • Backend or Full stack positions - no full-time frontend
  • Automated testing and CI are required
  • Advocate for Domain Driven Design approach
  • Still, able to move in the startup pace, but I believe strongly that it its possible only with strong foundations
  • B2B contracts preferred strongly over employment

Who am I as a professional

Who am I as a person

Experience

SwingDev/Hippo Insurance NYSE: HIPPO, insurance, USA

Software engineer remote, from 07-2023

Part of Agent Enablement and Underwriting teams.

  • Varied projects aimed at improving the productivity of our sales agents.
  • Varied data migration projects - mostly involving Salesforce.
  • Partook in redesign of Underwriting Domain to increase the visibility of our decision-making process.
  • Microservices
  • TypeScript
  • Node
  • NestJS
  • REST+OpenAPI
  • PostgreSQL
  • GraphQL
  • Salesforce
  • SQS

I like my current job.

Point of contact for references: Andrew Paulson, Engineering Manager

Speychain ltd startup, marketplace, UK

Software consultant remote, from 06-2023 to 06-2023

Scaffolding of MVP for a contractee team.

  • Worked with business to define domain & map it to the database and GraphQL API design.
  • Set up CI and toolchain for backend development & testing.
  • TypeScript
  • Node
  • NestJS
  • PostgreSQL
  • GraphQL
  • Prisma
  • Heroku
  • Clerk

One-month contract as agreed. I moved on to a more permanent position.

Point of contact for references: Martin Richter, CTO

Ownplay Inc. startup, mobile game, USA

Software consultant remote, from 11-2022 to 05-2023

Greenfield project, layered architecture, CQRS, DDD, TDD.

  • Created backoffice APIs, SPA admin panels, and part of analytics for a mobile game, and its web-based prototype
  • Built infrastructure for testing, and convinced the team to adopt the same approach for the rest of the project
  • Coached junior developers
  • TypeScript
  • Node
  • NestJS
  • PostgreSQL
  • REST+OpenAPI
  • React
  • React Query
  • Redux
  • Firebase
  • BigQuery

The contract was cut short, as there was no more work until a company gathers enough data from the prototype. In March 2024 I received an offer to jump back on board.

Point of contact for references: Alexander Ovchinnikov, CTO

Aterian NASDAQ: ATER, e-commerce/logistic/ML company, USA

Backend developer hybrid, from 11-2020 to 11-2022

Greenfield project, layered architecture, CQRS, DDD, TDD.

  • As a team, we built from scratch working multi-tenant affiliate platform on top of the Amazon Attribution program, before appropriate APIs were even available and backoffice for parts of the process that could not be automated
  • Built a BDD-like testing solution allowing for fast writing human-readable integration/E2E tests
  • Built specification-driven prototype of our planned public APIs
  • In addition to backend work, I've set up our frontend architecture, which provided a Stimulus-like experience for our frontend developers, after we decided against React and SPA frontend
  • I performed some light DevOps and security-hardening tasks
  • PHP
  • Symfony
  • PostgreSQL
  • TypeScript
  • Vagrant
  • Jenkins
  • GitHub
  • Ansible
  • Terraform
  • Azure

After all the other team members decided to quit in three months, I followed in their footsteps.

Point of contact for references: Jakub Włodek, Team Leader

Dogadamycie sp. z o.o. computer assisted translation company, PL

Full stack developer remote, from 01-2019 to 10-2020

I've migrated the whole system from "ball-of-mud" to event-driven architecture, to cover critical paths with tests, and then extract the whole domain. It greatly reduced the overhead of constant semi-blind bug-fixing.

  • Taken the role of informal teach-lead during a process of bringing in previously outsourced software
  • Dockerized our infrastructure, set up GitLab and private container registry, built CI pipelines
  • Offloaded long-running and external, pooled workloads to queue
  • Introduced automated testing
  • Created a unified customer panel to replace 7+ separate ones—doing the same in a slightly different way
  • Greatly improved customer journey and automatic valuation process UX for our customers
  • Integrated multiple payment systems and CAT software
  • PHP
  • Laravel
  • PostgreSQL
  • Redis
  • JavaScript
  • JQuery
  • GitLab
  • Docker

I've put my notice, after an unsuccessful attempt to formalize my de-facto role in the company

Point of contact for references available on request: Robert Siemiński, CTO @ the time

Joymile startup, a middleman in sales and technical inspections of used cars, PL

Full stack developer onsite, from 04-2018 to 01-2019

Microservices light where in place—understood as independent, minimal Django sub-applications communicating via REST endpoints or events brokered by Kafka. Deployed together on a single server, but ready to be extracted and scaled independently at a moment's notice. React SPA on the front feed by our GraphQL API. All well-tested.

  • It took me two weeks to learn Python/Django enough to contribute fully-tested production code, and two months to be able to contribute meaningful improvements to our whole code-base
  • Moved legacy PHP supporting systems and almost 3-years worth of data to our main infrastructure
  • As a team, we built a customer journey that provided both great UX and gathered every possible bit of data that could help our sales which we feed to our CRM and marketing automation
  • Python
  • Django
  • PostgreSQL
  • Redis
  • Kafka
  • GraphQL
  • JavaScript
  • Node
  • React
  • Redux
  • Docker

The company dissolved after a third unsuccessful pivot when it became obvious that parts of our sales pipeline cannot be automated. Therefore, additional staff required will prevent us from scaling as efficiently as investors expected.

Point of contact for references: Wojciech Frycz, CTO

Gremi Media SA publisher of "Rzeczpospolita" and rp.pl, PL

Technical Architect onsite, from 09-2016 to 03-2018

Team Leader onsite, from 04-2016 to 08-2016

Senior Web Developer onsite, from 10-2015 to 03-2016

Starting architecture could be described as "the less you know, the better you sleep", migrated to "it's ugly, but it can be understood, works and is stable", and further to "let's extract things that shouldn't be here in the first place to separate Symfony-based projects" - It was a set of ugly compromises enforced by legacy and vendors. But hey, it worked and was stable after just a few months of work which was a great improvement from the business standpoint.

  • Migrated the company from FTP deployment and SVN to Git, and on-premises GitLab for the deployment process
  • After banning FTP access to production I built and maintained GIT<->SVN bridge for the transition period
  • Understood, fixed our implementation and documented a badly misused caching system of our legacy CMS
  • Increased template and code reuse by orders of magnitude
  • Replaced an assorted collection of PHP 5.2.17 (version enforced by vendor) scripts augmenting our legacy CMS, by self-built Symfony-inspired light framework enabling us to introduce automated testing and creation of Vagrant-based local environments for developers
  • Introduced automated testing
  • Introduced proper logging solution
  • Fixed a multitude of errors falsifying our analytics data
  • Replaced template-embedded frontend scripts with a proper build process and React-based components
  • Improved uptime/availability of our main property from around 97.6% to 99.4%
  • Improved loading times for our customers and their consistency by order of magnitude
  • Lead a focused effort to improve the SEO of our properties
  • Added to search engines indexes millions of missing pieces of content—lost after previous CMS migration
  • Reworked our advertising system to allow new ad formats and better experience for our customers
  • The whole process improved our traffic and Unique Users numbers by around one third
  • Evaluated multiple potential replacements like a Washington Post CMS solution, in-house or outsourced Drupal, etc.
  • Archeotech
  • PHP
  • Symfony
  • JavaScript
  • Node
  • JQuery
  • React
  • Vagrant
  • GitLab
  • Shell

I've put my notice, as there was not much more for me to do until migration to a new solution—which hasn't had a clear roadmap yet. Not to mention, I felt burned out after 2.5 years of fighting with legacy code and inertia.

Point of contact for references available on request: our Director of IT

Uwazaj.pl startup, a middleman between lawyers and customers, PL

Full stack developer remote, from 05-2015 to 05-2017

WordPress with my own OO abstraction layer over relevant APIs, which speed up the development of this and multiple other projects I was involved with.

  • Taken over after the software house failed to deliver both in terms of features and quality and built our product from scratch just in time to meet our investor's roadmap
  • Build a visual Landing Page builder for our marketing with A/B testing capabilities, later adapted to manage the whole website by our non-technical staff without my involvement
  • Integrated content-marketing/sales part with our custom CRM and call-center
  • Set up our payment system
  • Supported the project during its lifetime as a sole developer/ops
  • PHP
  • Java Script
  • JQuery
  • WordPress
  • Gulp
  • Foundation
  • SASS

The company dissolved, after failing to generate revenue big enough to justify the fixed costs of our operations.

Point of contact for references available on request: our CEO

Idium AS/Idium Kraków Sp. z o.o low-cost, low-effort, website-as-service company, NO/PL

Junior PHP Developer onsite, from 05-2014 to 01-2015

Senior WordPress Consultant onsite, from 01-2014 to 04-2014

  • As a team, we built and maintained a framework allowing for ultra-fast delivery of customized, feature-complete WordPress websites for Scandinavian businesses
  • Built an internal application automating the generation of SEO reports used by our sales
  • Taken part in cleanup and hardening effort after two separate security incidents
  • PHP
  • WordPress
  • JavaScript
  • Shell

I put my notice after our Norwegian manager was replaced by Polish one, which - for reasons unknown to me to this day - hated my guts—a sentiment not shared by our colleagues, as far as I know.

Assorted freelance contracts

Web developer remote, from 01-2011 to 06-2015

Building, adding features, and maintaining various websites, WordPress plugins, and themes.

Occasional migration from Joomla or custom solutions to WordPress.

  • PHP
  • WordPress
  • WooCommerce
  • JavaScript
  • SASS/LESS
  • Gulp/Grunt

Internet media

Journalist, editor, and blogger remote, from 10-2007 to 06-2012

Writing for multiple internet media entities, including o2 sp. z o.o. (currently: Grupa Wirtualna Polska), Antyweb and Polish edition PC World Computer about IT-related and unrelated topics.

Working as an editor/managing editor in two big blog networks.