Darko Štriga
Verified Expert in Engineering
Software Developer
Zagreb, Croatia
Toptal member since June 24, 2022
Darko is a product tech lead and senior software engineer with 14 years of experience specializing in back-end development, data-intensive applications, and distributed systems. He's led the design and implementation of scalable systems using event-driven architecture across various industries. As a founding engineer in a startup and a collaborator with large corporations, Darko has delivered impactful solutions. He holds a PhD in computer science.
Portfolio
Experience
- Microservices Architecture - 7 years
- Functional Programming - 7 years
- NoSQL - 7 years
- Elixir - 7 years
- Apache Kafka - 5 years
- Amazon DynamoDB - 5 years
- Amazon Aurora - 4 years
- Fastly - 3 years
Work Experience
Founding Engineer
Sportening
- Set up a microservice architecture, designed the protocol for a chat app, designed and set up a cache (Fastly), and developed APIs.
- Oversaw end-to-end engineering execution, including back end, iOS, and Android. Ensured that engineering execution within a product team was continuously monitored, managed, and improved whenever possible.
- Handled the team's velocity and managed tech debt by determining and communicating the right tradeoffs and identifying execution bottlenecks.
Social Data Analytic Group Lead
University of Zagreb, FER, Social Networking and Computing Laboratory
- Served as the group leader. The aim was to address challenges by designing and implementing a mechanism and prototyping a platform that derives its smartness from combining telecommunication operators' user data and user-generated context-aware data.
- Developed the SmartSocial platform. The SmartSocial platform algorithm fetched almost 150 GB of raw Facebook user data for 404,274 Facebook users based on a survey filled by 1,826 Facebook users. Used Facebook Graph API v1.0.
- Used data science methods to propose the SmartSocial trust method, which can recommend a user's close friend with more than 80% precision.
Research and Teaching Assistant
University of Zagreb, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing
- Served as a teaching assistant in charge of new learning materials and oversaw demonstrations of student exercises. Worked with object-oriented programming in Java, social networks (social data, NoSQL), and App Start Contest as a jury member.
- Coordinated and mentored students at the student startup incubator SPOCK.
- Acted as a data science research engineer and a software engineer (Java, MongoDB, and Bootstrap) on the project called A Platform for Context-Aware Social Networking of Mobile Users, conducted by SmartSocial and Ericsson Nikola Tesla.
- Lectured students as a teaching assistant and acted as a web developer for WordPress websites and a project named ICT Competence Network for Innovative Services for Persons with Complex Communication Needs.
- Developed content and collaboration-based algorithms for movie recommendations on Croatian Telecom's MAXtv Recommender project. Served as a software engineer using Java.
- Acted as a research engineer and a software engineer on the Rasco-HEP project for vacuum road sweepers.
Information Technology Consultant
Godbex
- Gathered functional requirements for ERC-20 contract and Godbex platform.
- Participated in pair programming and code reviews of the ERC-20 contract.
- Tracked the development of the ERC-20 contract using the OpenZeppelin framework and Solidity.
Software Engineer
Dzangol
- Developed the front end of a ticketing management platform for the RFID cards in AngularJS.
- Created the back end of a ticketing management platform for the RFID cards using PHP.
- Gathered functional requirements for the Dzangol app's back end and front end.
Project History
Sportening | The Social Network for The World's Sports Fans
I was the third employee, and today Sportening has around 60 people (50-60% engineers). As a product tech lead (software engineer/lead back-end developer), I worked on data-intensive applications/services in the sports industry field. I was responsible for end-to-end engineering execution, including back end, iOS, and Android.
Godbex | Secure and Scalable Next-generation Gold Bullion and Cryptocurrency Platform
I acted as an information technology consultant and was responsible for gathering functional requirements and tracking the development of the ERC-20 contract using the OpenZeppelin framework and Solidity.
SmartSocial | Platform for Context-aware Social Networking of Mobile Users
I developed the SmartSocial platform. Algorithms in the SmartSocial platform fetched almost 150GB of raw Facebook user data for 404,274 Facebook users based on a survey successfully filled by 1,826 Facebook users. I used data science methods to propose the SmartSocial trust method, which can recommend a user's close friend with more than 80% precision.
Dzangol | Ticketing Management Platform for RFID Cards
I developed a ticketing management platform for RFID cards, including its front end and back end.
Education
PhD in Computer Science
University of Zagreb, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing - Croatia, Zagreb
Master's Degree in Economics
University of Zagreb, Faculty of Economics and Business - Croatia, Zagreb
Master's Degree in Computer Engineering
University of Zagreb, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing - Croatia, Zagreb
Certifications
Master the Coding Interview: Data Structures + Algorithms
Udemy
JavaScript Algorithms and Data Structures Masterclass
Udemy
Skills
Libraries/APIs
Facebook API, Social APIs, jQuery, Doctrine, OpenZeppelin, Doctrine 2, REST APIs
Tools
Postman, Slack, Fastly, Oh My Zsh, GitLab, GitHub, ITerm, Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM), Apple Push Notifications, AWS SDK, Weka, Varnish
Languages
Elixir, Java, PHP, R, JavaScript, Solidity, Erlang (OTP)
Frameworks
JSON Web Tokens (JWT), OAuth 2, Bootstrap, AngularJS
Paradigms
Microservices Architecture, Functional Programming, Functional Testing, Model View Presenter (MVP), Object-relational Mapping (ORM), Management, Agile Software Development, RESTful Development
Platforms
Apache Kafka, Visual Studio Code (VS Code), Docker, Ethereum, Blockchain, Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Storage
Amazon DynamoDB, Cache, NoSQL, Amazon S3 (AWS S3), MySQL, PostgreSQL, Amazon Aurora, MongoDB, JSON, Storage as a Service (STaaS)
Other
Computer Science, Push Notifications, Technical Leadership, Data Structures, Algorithms, Server Sent Events (SSE), Functional Design, Social Network Analysis, Social Network Analytics, Social Networks, APIs, Analysis, Analytics, Architecture, Back-end, Data Science, Recommendation Systems, Code Review, Content Delivery Networks (CDN), Streaming Data, Cloud Storage, Optimization, Memory Optimization, Digital Marketing, Business Analysis, ERC-20, IT Project Management, Job Schedulers, IT Management, Full-stack Development, Statistical Methods, Statistics, Clustering, Platforms, Data Visualization, Social Media Marketing (SMM), Frameworks, RFID, PDF, Smart Contracts, Protocol Buffers, RESTful Services, RESTful Microservices, Data Scraping, Full-stack
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