About Myself

Hi! I'm Serban, an IT enthusiast which works full time as a VP of Engineering at Trilogy, taught Software Design at TU-CN and founded a local tech start-up.

I typically fulfill the roles of solution architect and lead developer with a strong focus on growing my team through technical challenges, training sessions, presentations and mentoring.

I have frequently switched between technologies, becoming proficient in NodeJS, Spring and the SAP ecosystem. My current target area of expertise is around Amazon Web Services, Spring Boot and React.

Myself

Background

Software Engineering MSc.

Studying for my Master's degree at the faculty of Mathematics and Informatics, Babeș-Bolyai University.


See full education

VP of Software Engineering

Managing a software engineering team that monitors, operates, maintains and extends several widely used products.


See full work history

Project Highlights

Work
InsideSales: PlayBooks
2021 - 2023

A recently acquired Sales Engagement platform with a micro-service architecture, written in a heterogenous mix of Golang, Rust, NodeJS and PHP, with a React UI and running on AWS.

I have been coordinating multiple parallel tracks including: replacing parts of the system with SaaS offerings, lifting and shifting some of the servers from their data center to AWS, fixing high priority defects, stabilizing and monitoring the product, etc.

Work
msg.Check-In
2020 - 2023

A Spring Boot application with a Semantic UI React frontend for managing which colleagues are coming at the office in which days and in which room / place.

Currently, this product is being sold using a SaaS model, with the option of on-premise deployment on request. The SaaS version runs on AWS (CloudFront, Load Balancer, ECS, RDS).

Work
DIPKO
2019 - 2021

I was initially the architect and lead developer for building a cloud-based, multi-tenant SaaS platform for managing municipal services. In 2021, I served as an occasional consultant for the team.

We implemented a modular NodeJS core, communicating with several serverless micro-services and a monolithic Angular frontend application.

Work History

VP of Software Engineering (GT School, Crossover, Trilogy Sales Platform)
VP of Software Engineering (GT School, Crossover, Trilogy Sales Platform)
20.02.2023 - present

Leading an engineering department of over 20 engineers that build, maintain and operate three of our strategic products: GT School CoachBot, the Crossover Hiring Platform and the Trilogy Sales Platform.Responsible for setting up the hiring pipelines, interviewing candidates, setting up our internal processes and guidelines, leading, coaching and mentoring the engineers, taking important technical decisions, etc.

VP of Software Engineering (ResponseTek, Playbooks)
VP of Software Engineering (ResponseTek, Playbooks)
31.07.2021 - 20.02.2023

Led a team of 20 software engineers in the successful operation, maintenance, and extension of multiple SaaS products. Set up most of our internal processes, mentored and coached the engineers, and took most of high-level architectural decisions. Reduced outages by a factor of 5 through improved monitoring and observability. Cut cloud infrastructure costs in half through optimization efforts. Implemented new features, cleared the defect backlog and modernized a telephony system, migrating from a self-hosted solution to a serverless implementation using Twilio.

Software Engineering Consultant @ msg-systems
Software Engineering Consultant @ msg-systems
30.06.2020 - present

I provide technical consulting for cloud-native projects, making technical decisions and implementing challenging tasks for a SaaS product on AWS using Spring Boot and React. I also mentor and coach a group of high-potential developers.

Cloud Solutions Architect (DevFactory)
Cloud Solutions Architect (DevFactory)
14.06.2020 - 31.07.2021

As an ivory-tower architect, wrote technical architecture specifications for a portfolio of over 200 products. Produced an average of 3 specifications per week, with implementation requiring hundreds of man-days by engineers. Expert in utilizing AWS serverless technologies (Lambda, Step Functions, DynamoDB, Cognito, etc.) and experienced in modernizing legacy on-premise products. Demonstrated strong initiative by volunteering for additional tasks, such as peer review, legacy product analysis, cost reduction strategies, automation script creation, and more.

Co-Founder @ KickIT
Co-Founder @ KickIT
01.09.2018 - 30.06.2020

As a co-founder of a start-up, I was responsible for legal, financial, and administrative tasks. Our company operated in the outdoor sports industry and suffered loss of customers during the COVID crisis. I designed, built, and managed a cloud-native progressive web application using React and Spring Boot, deployed on AWS Elastic Beanstalk, focusing on a great user experience, a smooth continuous deployment pipeline, and robust monitoring and observability setup.

Teaching Assistant @ T.U. Cluj-Napoca
Teaching Assistant @ T.U. Cluj-Napoca
31.01.2018 - 30.06.2018

As a lecturer of the Software Design laboratory for 3rd year computer science students, I developed my own teaching materials based on a flexible curriculum and evaluated student progress throughout the semester. I also graded their final exams to determine their overall performance in the course.

Lead Software Engineer @ msg-systems
Lead Software Engineer @ msg-systems
28.02.2014 - 30.06.2020

Served as a full-time employee with a versatile range of responsibilities including architecture, technical leadership, development, coaching, mentoring, hiring, training, and sales. My expertise includes SAP, Spring, NodeJS, React, and AWS, and I was recognized as an "SAP Developer Hero". As a leader, I managed teams of up to 10 people utilizing agile methodologies such as Scrum and Kanban. We successfully delivered several SaaS solutions used by thousands of users.

Certifications

AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Professional
AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate
ESOL - Certificate in Advanced English
ESOL - Certificate in Advanced English
01.05.2011

University of Cambridge

Education

Babeș-Bolyai University
Babeș-Bolyai University
01.10.2017 - present

Master's degree in Software Engineering at the faculty of Mathematics and Informatics.

SAP Development Course
SAP Development Course
01.10.2013 - 15.01.2014

A series of lectures and laboratories hosted by msg which served as an introduction to the SAP world.

Technical University of Cluj-Napoca
Technical University of Cluj-Napoca
01.09.2012 - 01.06.2016

Bachelor degree in Computer Science at the faculty of Computer Science and Information Technology.

Leonardo da'Vinci Project
Leonardo da'Vinci Project
01.09.2011 - 15.10.2011

A month-and-a-half-long exchange project set in Leipzig, Germany. Studied basic web technologies like HTML, PHP and JS at a local company.

Gheorghe Lazar National College Sibiu
Gheorghe Lazar National College Sibiu
15.09.2008 - 15.06.2012

High school degree in Mathematics - Informatics. My first contact with programming. During this period, I've learnt C / C++, C# and PHP.

My Projects

Work
InsideSales: PlayBooks
2021 - 2023

A recently acquired Sales Engagement platform with a micro-service architecture, written in a heterogenous mix of Golang, Rust, NodeJS and PHP, with a React UI and running on AWS.

I have been coordinating multiple parallel tracks including: replacing parts of the system with SaaS offerings, lifting and shifting some of the servers from their data center to AWS, fixing high priority defects, stabilizing and monitoring the product, etc.

Work
msg.Check-In
2020 - 2023

A Spring Boot application with a Semantic UI React frontend for managing which colleagues are coming at the office in which days and in which room / place.

Currently, this product is being sold using a SaaS model, with the option of on-premise deployment on request. The SaaS version runs on AWS (CloudFront, Load Balancer, ECS, RDS).

Work
msg.CareerPaths
2017 - 2023

A series of technical trainings primarily for entry level developers and colleagues that wanted to shift technologies. The target technologies are: Spring Boot, NodeJS, React, Angular and AWS.

I was responsible for preparing the training materials, presenting them, doing live demos, regularly checking in with the trainees and finally reviewing their work.

Personal
Foly Sites
2022

I built from scratch a couple of static websites for my wife: a personal travel blog and an interior design presentation site. They are hosted using serverless AWS services.

The content of the sites can be maintained by her using Netlify CMS.

Work
ResponseTek SSO
2021

Guided a small development team to enhance our customer feedback platform with SSO (Single Sign On) capabilities, by adding OAuth and SAML2 support.

I analyzed the existing code base, derived the architecture, designed the solution and organized the engineering work to ensure the project's success.

Work
Architecture Spec Work
2020 - 2021

My main responsibility is to write detailed technical architecture specifications for a portfolio 200+ products. I write about three specs per week, each requiring up to a few hundred man-days to implement.

Most specs extensively use AWS (AppSync, Lambda, DynamoDB, Cognito, etc.) but sometimes we also tackle changes to legacy, monolithic, on-premise products.

Work
Cost Optimization
2020 - 2021

I've performed extensive analysis on more than 500 AWS accounts to find cost reduction opportunities.

This involved writing a suite of Lambdas that periodically queried the target accounts for metrics and even executed some strategies (resource deletion, installing agents, etc.).

Work
DIPKO
2019 - 2021

I was initially the architect and lead developer for building a cloud-based, multi-tenant SaaS platform for managing municipal services. In 2021, I served as an occasional consultant for the team.

We implemented a modular NodeJS core, communicating with several serverless micro-services and a monolithic Angular frontend application.

Work
Financial Insights
2020

We've set up and consumed the AWS Cost and Usage reports to break down and scrutinize the cost structure for an AWS organization generating over 20M USD in yearly costs.

The insights that we found were then implemented as automation and pushed into QuickSight and Google Sheets to be consumed by top executives.

Personal
Practical Dev Guide
2020

A YouTube series dedicated to teaching basic web application programming for students.

I am showcasing step-by-step how to build a typical Spring Boot application, backed by an embedded H2 database and fronted by a React user interface.

Work
msg.CareerStart
2019 - 2020

msg.CareerStart is the de-facto flagship internship programme of the company's local branch. It was primarily based on an idea of mine.

I was the main organizer, a technical mentor and an interviewer for the first edition. We mentored eight students that built a three tier application using ABAP, Spring Boot, and Angular. Afterward, most of these students were offered permanent positions at the company.

Academic
Invoice Generator (II)
2019

A micro-service architecture web application built for the Service oriented architecture master course.

It is a re-implementation of the older invoice generator it using Spring, Mithril, NodeJS and Docker.

Academic
Simple Q&A
2019

A micro-service architecture web application built for the Service oriented architecture master course.

It consisted of several NodeJS micro-services, a Zuul API Gateway, a simplified OAuth 2.0 authorization server and a React user interface.

Academic
Software Design Lab
2019

I've hosted the Software Design laboratory for a group of students at T.U. Cluj Napoca.

I prepared my own learning resources and recorded our sessions in which we explored various architectural styles, design patterns and technologies (mostly Spring and React).

Personal
KickIT
2018 - 2019

Co-founder for a Romanian startup, KickIT, targeting the amateur soccer scene.

I was responsible for architecture, design, implementation and operations for the cloud-native solution, consisting of a Spring Boot backend, Lambdas and a React PWA deployed on AWS.

Work
Troubleshooting Service
2018 - 2019

A small integration project on AWS for parsing XML exports from a legacy system. It consisted of a micro-service and a Lambda triggered by the S3 events.

I played the role of solution architect, designing and aligning the interfaces of the components, whilst the implementation itself was tackled by other developers.

Work
GSA: Common Services
2017 - 2019

Architect and lead developer for building a suite of reusable micro-services supporting business applications for a market-leading manufacturing company.

I've had a major role in guiding our customer through various architectural decisions, whilst also implementing the most technically challenging components.

Personal
My Portfolio
2016 - 2019

This very website, which is meant to showcase my experience and projects.

Initially built with vanilla UI5, then re-built with custom controls using JSX, finally re-built again using React.

Personal
Conference Feedback
2018

A small application for submitting feedback after or during the IT Conference on SAP Technologies Cluj.

Later on, I have also hosted a small training about cloud native development using this application as an example.

Work
GDPR Integration
2018

A small integration project on AWS for handling newsletter subscription and un-subscription actions to conform to GDPR.

I designed and fully implemented this solution directly on the customer's AWS account.

Academic
Kindergarten Game
2018

A simple story-like game for kindergarten children based on the "La Polul Nord" story by Marin Sorescu.

I built it for the Design of interactive software systems master course, the challenge being that the UI must be suitable for usage by four-year-olds.

Personal
SAPIM
2018

SAP API Manager command line interface which can be used to deploy, create and remove API Proxies.

I built this CLI in my spare time to help the development process in SCP projects.

Work
Travel Expenses
2018

A project for our internal finance department to help them manage travel expense reports, calculate allowances and track business trips for our colleagues.

I acted as technical mentor and product owner for the fairly large team of developers assigned to this project.

Work
Candidate Management
2016 - 2018

An internal project for managing our entry-level job candidates. The project was built using Spring Boot and a PostgreSQL database, with React on the front-end.

My role was that of a technical mentor, organizer and product owner.

Work
Insurance as a service
2017

A continuation of the "Next Generation Underwriting" project, but focused more towards cloud enablement. The project consists of several smaller prototypes or showcases that aim to be deployed on a cloud platform (e.g. AWS).

I had mostly development-related tasks related to building a MEAN stack solution.

Personal
UI5 Auth
2017

Lightweight open-source UI5 library which enables developers to build user interfaces which adapt at runtime to user roles.

The main goal of this library was to decouple the responsibilities of regular UI5 applications: role-based adaptation should be done declaratively and centrally for each app.

Personal
UI5 JSX
2017

Babel plugin for transpiling inline JSX into UI5 render functions. It enables very easy custom control creation by simplifying the render process.

Personal
UI5 Viz
2017

A simple open-source UI5 library for displaying graph data. I built it using a D3 force graph layout.

Work
Next Generation Underwriting
2016 - 2017

Project focused on aiding underwriters in their work through predictive analytics and pre-built business rules.

My role in this project was a combination of a solutions architect, development lead and full stack developer.

We were a relatively small team of five developers and we built a series of Java and UI5 MVPs over the span of a year.

Personal
SBWO
2016 - 2017

A Java standalone application, with an embedded web server and embedded database. The application aims to help small business to store, manage and use their business data.

I have built this project as an exercise in implementing various mechanisms from scratch (user authentication, session management, scheduling, etc.) to enhance my skills.

Work
GTFE Analysis Reports
2016

A customer add-on to FS-RI (Financial Services - Reinsurance) for the General Reinsurance Company.

The add-on consisted of several UI5 applications which pulled various performance indicators calculated by ABAP CDS views and exposed through SAP Gateway OData services.

Academic
SMTA
2015 - 2016

A shipment tracking application targeted at the transport insurance industry branch, consisting of two tracking device prototypes (Android, Arduino) which communicate with cloud services, which store the data, send out notifications and process the collected figures to expose analytical scenarios.

As this was my bachelor degree project, I've built it completely from scratch by myself.

Work
Taxonomic Engine
2015 - 2016

A SCP, HANA, UI5 project for the human resources industry. The main goal of the project was to automatically parse and classify candidates based on their CVs.

We had a small development team in which I was the technical lead under the guidance of a senior software architect.

Academic
Document Generator (Remake)
2015

A remake of an older project, with MongoDB for storing the document templates, Apache Derby + JDBC for storing the various user, template and field configurations and an UI5 interface. The OpenOffice API was called directly from Java to generate the documents.

Personal
EPM WebSocket
2015

A small personal project which realized real-time communication between an ABAP based user interface (classic Dynpro), a UI5 interface hosted on the ABAP system and another UI5 interface hosted on SAP Cloud Platform.

Personal
Graphical IDE
2015

An application which can be used to write imperative Java code by dragging and dropping functional blocks. The generated code can also be displayed inside the application, compiled and run. The front-end is done in UI5 and the back-end is built in Java.

Academic
Hospital
2015

Hospital appointment management cloud application realized with JPA and UI5. Real-time notifications were supported by using WebSocket communication between the clients and the cloud.

Academic
Ticket System
2015

A UI-only application for an online, web-based ticketing system. It has three types of users: customers which may open support tickets, employees which must solve the tickets and managers which can oversee the performance of the employees and must solve any customer complaints.

Academic
Web Paint
2015

A UI5 app which uses FabricJS to allow the user to draw by drag-and-dropping shapes and import external pictures. The user can also resize, move and change the colors of the shapes, use undo-redo functionality, save or load drawing files and also to export to PNG.

Academic
Bank
2014 - 2015

A small bank application on the cloud. Persistency was done with plain JDBC and the user interface with UI5. This application was later remade by using Hibernate, Spring and AngularJS.

Work
msg.LRM
2014 - 2015

Various customer development projects centered on the Life Reinsurance Module.

I was part of the product development team for a few months to get acquainted to the module and the underlying framework. Afterwards, I worked on customization projects for large enterprise customers.

Work
SAP FS-PM add-on
2014 - 2015

A small customer addition to the Financial Services - Policy Management SAP module.

Academic
Bookstore
2014

A small bookstore on the cloud. Is very similar to the bank applications, but the persistency was done in XML files (stored in a Cloud Document Store) and the user also has the possibility of generating reports in various formats (TXT, XML, CSV).

Work
Internship Apps
2014

Several primary insurance small UI5 applications. All of them had SAP Gateway backend services, which exposed RFCs from standard modules. Most of the applications targeted the transport insurance segment and two of them targeted small goods primary insurance.

Personal
Job Registry
2014

This project was built in my spare time for a land surveyor. Using it, one can keep track of all jobs and related court terms. It offers a calendar for seeing court dates and automatically reads data from the Ministry of Justice Web API and the National Agency for Cadaster website to update the data.

Personal
Invoice Generator
2013 - 2014

This is an application built on top of OpenOffice which can be used to manage invoices for a small company. It allows the user to define multiple profiles, it keeps track of customer data and generates OpenOffice invoices using a user-defined template. Receipts may also be generated from an existing invoice.

Personal
Document Generator
2012 - 2014

A application for land surveyors built on top of OpenOffice, which takes input values from the user and optionally an XML data file and generates documents using user specified templates. The values given by the user or read from the XML are either filled directly in the templates or are used to build tables and hide / show sections.

Academic
Assembly Graph Plotter
2013

A mathematical functions graph plotting application entirely written in assembly. The user is able to enter the mathematical formula in the console and then the program plots the function's graph.

Personal
Server Manager
2011

A program specifically designed to manage dedicated servers for Mount and Blade: Warband. It allowed the simultaneous management of several servers, checking the logs, creating reports, scheduling start, stop or restart actions.

Personal
Swadian Roleplay Mod
2010 - 2011

A Mount and Blade: Warband mod which aimed to completely change the game concept without forcing players to download anything. For this project, I was the sole developer. It consisted of modified Python scripts which were run by the server, PHP sites, C / C++ log parsers.