Michal Šváb

Profile

I am a software engineer passionate about technology, obsessed with delivering quality products and enjoyable user experience to customers.

I've been working as an engineer for about 15 years using mainly Javascript and Java (back in the days). Most recently I've been a CTO of an early-stage legal startup, it was a small team so my role was mostly hands-on. I was developing the backend, frontend, creating technical architecture and managing our AWS infrastructure. I love all parts of development, from design and implementation, over supporting live systems to automation and improving the developer experience. I feel it's important to have a holistic understanding of the product you're building. I'm also a big fan of self-organising teams and remote working.

My favourite thing about development is the pace of change. The environment evolves so fast and that just makes the work so damn interesting!

Experience

CTO @ Alacrity Law

July 2018 - September 2023     Remote

  • Led development of legal matter management platform with strong focus on security and high availability.
  • Managed engineering teams, planning work, hiring, 1-1s and performance reviews.
  • Worked with the management to define and shape product features.
  • Built and managed AWS infrastructure. Fully automated using Terraform. Security hardening. Regular infrastructure cost reviews.
  • Managed ISO 27001 certification and related processes.
  • Technologies: Node, React, GraphQL, Postgres, ElasticSearch, Terraform, Docker, AWS

Lead Software Engineer @ Envision

September 2016 - July 2018     Remote

  • Led design and development of scalable payment platform from scratch. Highly available and fault-tolerant microservice architecture, combination of REST APIs and Kafka messaging.
  • Created Continuous Delivery pipeline using Docker, Ansible and Bamboo.
  • Worked on infrastructure and deployment automation on Azure using Ansible and Terraform. Working towards immutable infrastructure.
  • Technologies: Java, Spring, Node, React, Postgres, Kafka, ElasticSearch, Consul, Ansible, Terraform, Docker, Kubernetes, Jaeger

Software Engineer @ Adthena

February 2015 - March 2016     London, UK

  • Development of competitor intelligence platform in Java, Scala and Node.js.
  • Large scale data collection and processing pipeline with Apache Spark, Storm, RabbitMQ.
  • Worked on front-end for reporting and data visualisation using Backbone and ES6.
  • Infrastructure and deployment automation on AWS using Ansible.

Software Engineer @ Gamesys

July 2013 - August 2014     London, UK

  • Built a CMS in Java responsible for serving image assets in the appropriate quality for a given device.
  • Development of a showcase leveraging the CMS in Javascript (Backbone, Grunt).
  • Using "scrum" process, TDD, routine performance testing.

Software Engineer @ Capita Employee Benefits

April 2011 - June 2013     London, UK

  • Development of a portal for managing employee benefits and pension funds in Java.
  • Rewrite of legacy messaging platform using Apache Camel and ActiveMQ.
  • Agile environment, extensive pair programming and TDD, working directly with the business.

Software Engineer @ MoroSystems

September 2008 - February 2011     Brno, CZ

  • Development of e-commerce web applications with Spring, Hibernate and Javascript on frontend.
  • Profiling and making optimizations on these projects on all layers – application code, caching and database tuning.
  • Implemented several Javascript UIs that were compatible all the way to IE6. And never want to do that again!

Skills

  • Javascript

    Node, Express, React, Jest, Vite

  • Java, Scala

    Dropwizard, Guice, Spring Boot

    Storm, Spark

  • Databases

    Postgres, MongoDB, ElasticSearch, Redis, Redshift, SQLServer

  • Tools

    Kafka, RabbitMQ, ActiveMQ, Prometheus, Jaeger, Consul, Vault

  • Infrastructure

    Terraform, Ansible, Docker, Kubernetes, Lambda

    AWS, Azure, Heroku

  • Soft Skills

    Leadership, Hiring, Mentoring

    Writing technical specs and documentation

    Scrum, Kanban, Retrospectives, Pair programming

Education

Bc. Information Technology

2006 - 2009     Brno University of Technology, CZ

Bsc. equivalent