Roman Pietrzak aka Yosh
Info for recruiters
Last update: 2024-11-22

This page covers all typical information asked by IT recruiters during initial conversation.
Please read whole this page BEFORE contacting me.

General Info

  • My name is Roman Pietrzak
  • Currently: Leading the software at The Ozone Project as Head of Software / Lead Architect
  • Availability: I'm open to hear about great new opportunities. I'm happy to hear about challenging work

What I do

I develop software

  • Roles (now and past): Head of Software, Lead Architect, Tech Lead, Lead Developer, Software Engineer, Automated Test Lead
  • I am hands-on software developer
  • Experience at all sides of software delivery process:
    • I bridge product and tech
    • I work with people, lead teams and build processes
    • I have strong understanding of devops, infra, including specifics of AWS and GCP
    • I love improving: cost reduction, better, faster, simpler
  • I worked with variety of IT projects: web, cloud, embedded, mobile, desktop and some hardware design (PCB).
  • Currently in Ad Business. Last few projects in crypto/banking/transactional industries.

My specialities are

  • Leading in tech on every scale - a project, a team, the whole company stack.
    Introducing 20+ years of experience, with modern practices, I love:
    • efficient fully-remote teams - think "timezones", not "countries"
    • the proper use of testing, TDD and monitoring - the "know where we are" approach (max observability)
    • efficiency of the business processes - perfect balance between "automate everything" and "do this manually"
    • efficiency of the software processes - optimizations of workflows, team practices, optimizing the resources
    • good security/data safety practices - "least privililege" principle, zero trust, nontrivial backup flows
    • cost optimization vs scale - think billions of requests per day, respond in milliseconds, hundreds of servers
  • Full stack development (web dev):
    • node.js, JavaScript/Typescript, golang
      • working with Java, Python, Scala, C
      • in the past: C++, PHP, Laravel, ActionScript (Flash)
    • React/Vue/Angular, webSockets, webGL, Canvas, HTML 5, Stylus/CSS, nunjucks, Chakra, development of FrontEnd frameworks, advanced-flow data models
    • backend: NoSQL/SQL/graph databases, Kafka, Redis, MongoDB and more
    • code on edge: CloudFlare workers
    • data engineering and data science: bigQuery, TB/s of data processing, Airflow, DBT, Snowplow
    • 3rd party integrations: payments + subscriptions (e.g. Stripe, Adyen), KYC (e.g. sumsub), data feeds (crypto, forex, stocks), geolocation,
    • web-on-desktop applications: Electron
  • dev-ops, CI, SDET, performance optimization:
    • Amazon AWS: AWS CDK (Cloud Development Kit), SDK, ECS (Elastic Container Service) with Fargate (serverless containers), IAM, Systems Manager, EC2, CloudFormation and more
    • GCP: including a lot of work with pub/sub, bigquery and GCP's "compute" eco-system
    • containerization: docker, kubernetes (k8s), helm, Rancher
    • monitoring: Grafana, Prometheus, Datadog, Elastic Seach
    • continous integration: Jenkins, CircleCi, github/gitlab/bitbucket pipelines
    • TDD, jest, mocha, selenium, karma, tape
  • embedded like IoT (car cameras), STB (Digital TV) and Raspberry Pi-s:
    • Digital TV (SetTopBox, IPTV, MPEG, DVB etc.)
    • IoT, ARM/Cortex/MIPS, linux embedded, bare-metal
  • C/C++, QT+QML
  • obvious understanding of: git, svn, kanban, agile, scrum, jira, linux
  • also have significant experience with: Java, Python, VHDL (FPGA) and electronics (PCB design)
I'm experienced in integration of non-trivial cross-platform solutions:
  • example: React application connected to node.js API platform (with graphQL) on the AWS Cloud talking to IoT devices, embedded devices and desktop C++/Qt application
Coding language doesn't matter with my experience as I'm able to simply select best tools and best people for given task and lead the team to cover requirements. Or simply join existing team and project - and follow their rules.
  • Techs I'm good with (random order):
    KISS, node.js, C, C++, Java, PHP, JavaScript, ES5/ES6, CoffeeScript, Electron, Python, ActionScript, mySQL, noSQL, Ajax, HTML 5, Websocket, HTML Canvas, WebGL, SVG, GLSL, CSS, CASS, Selenium, Qt, QML, XML, JSON, binary JSON, WinAPI, linux, drivers, embedded, networking, sockets, GDI, openGL, directX, blitter, vertex shader, pixel shader, GLSL, HDTV, STB (Set Top Box), DVB, ATSC,
    multi-threading, memory optimisation, defects identification/fixing (debugging), TDD, BDD, automated tests, continous integration, Agile, Scrum, Jira, Bugzilla, Sprint, Workflow, ISO

My team - Kemu Studio

In the background, I lead Kemu Studio, a small team of developers:
  • we develop https://calculla.com
  • we help companies with their software:
    • we develop and maintain software for web, embedded, desktop apps and Digital TV (SetTopBox)
    • we help non-software companies to identify and fix issues with both their processes and their software
  • we use a mix of on-site/remote way of working - in a very efficient way
  • we have expertise in hardware design

Work I'm looking for #1 - software development and lead roles

I'm happy to talk about:

  • Leading roles or roles where I'm expected to take ownership of the project, to get things done, being responsible for a whole thing in a long-term work
  • I'd be especially interested in crypto/financial/security/AI or cross-domain roles e.g. IoT or web-controlled embedded devices

Type of work:

  • Ideally I'm looking for long-term, full-time, permanent* work with a company.
    *) "permanent" as "long-term", not "permanent" as "paid by salary"
  • Generally, invoice payments preferred:
    • I provide my work through Kemu Studio Limited (UK registered) or Kemu Studio Poland (EU registered). Paid by VAT invoices
  • I can talk about salary based work, but:
    - this doesn't work with fully-remote, international style of working. If your HR says otherwise - it's time to re-educate them.
    - it will also not cover my expenses and taxes - remember I'm working remotelly, do you want to pay insurance and taxes in my country of residence?
    - UK disclaimer: IR35 is a UK-only thing. Employ off-shore and the problems no longer exist. Think permanent work, paid by invoice. This is the only sensible way for remote work.

Location

  • Remote - may be partially remote. I'm national of UK and Poland (whole EU), I can go to any place in the world for a meeting once-twice a month
  • West London or Poland

The Rate

The rate obviously depends on details of the role, range of responsibilities, location, company culture, project culture, way of working etc.
  • 400-800 GBP/day + VAT
  • If it has to be a salary: I'm potentially interested in roles with salary 150k+ GBP

Priority goes to

  • "take responsibility of something" roles
  • Leading roles
  • Direct roles before agencies
  • Projects involving my team instead of just me

Work I'm looking for #2 - Lead off-shore site in Poland

I'd be happy to start and lead a development of a team/site in Eastern Europe for the company looking to expand offshore/remote. This may be excellent opportunity for cost-effective employment of highly skilled people - effective growth for you company.

I did that multiple times:
  • 2012: I was a part of initial startup team for medium-size Canadian company. (can't state names here)
  • 2014: I helped the Yorkshire startup company (100+ ppl) with their first offshore team - they selected Poland and grown this until they sold it 4x bigger in 2023.
  • 2021-2023: I've built software teams for 2 crypto companies - UK and UAE based.
  • 2023-now: We're building The Ozone Project with the software/data team centered around Poland, Zielona Góra.
  • Also I worked for a number of companies as a consultant in initial "decision" phase and during off-shore site launch.
...all of those succeeded!


Service legals

I provide services through one of my companies
  • Kemu Studio Limited in UK - EU-VAT registered
  • Kemu Studio in Poland - EU-VAT registered

Contact

I'm sorry, but due to high number of chit-chat-spam cold-calls I need to defend my time.
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