Jakub is available for hire
Hire JakubJakub Niemiec
Verified Expert in Project Management
Project Manager
Warsaw, Poland
Toptal member since April 27, 2022
Bio
Jakub is a project and product manager and IT professional with almost a decade of experience. He has been an Agile and DevOps specialist and coach, consultant, trainer, scrum master, engineering manager, and Java full-stack developer. Jakub brings this unique combination of technical programming and DevOps skills, coaching and soft skills, and a Lean/Agile mindset to his projects, including products critical to British and Danish authorities, such as COVID Pass and Digital Post.
Project Highlights
NHS COVID Pass for the UK National Health Service
Co-developed a product that significantly improved the comfort of traveling and using various services for millions of UK citizens during the pandemic.
New Generation of Digital Post for the Danish Agency for Digitization
Managed a team to build parts of a new generation of Digital Post for Denmark. Millions of Danish citizens and public authorities use the system for efficient communication.
ICI | National System of Debt Management in Denmark for the Danish Ministry of Taxation
Led a major project to process thousands of cases that were frozen in an ambiguous state due to legal and technical issues in the prior system and returned billions of Danish kroner to the budget.
Expertise
- Agile Product Management
- Agile Project Management
- DevOps
- Jira
- Scrum
- Team Building
- Team Leadership
- Training
Work Experience
Agile/DevOps Consultant and Trainer
2021 - PRESENT
Freelance
- Partnered with professional scrum trainers from QAgile to conduct detailed Agile/DevOps audits for companies working in the banking industry and helped them improve their processes.
- Conducted seminars on Lean/Agile practices, DevOps and Scrum.
- Guided companies on their way to agility and technical excellence.
Manager
2020 - 2021
Netcompany
- Served as scrum master, leading several Scrum teams distributed across offices and countries to deliver IT systems critical to Denmark and UK authorities.
- Worked remotely and in several countries: Vietnam (nine months), Poland, and Denmark, leading international projects and teams and providing high-quality services for clients in Denmark and England.
- Completed a 9-month mission in Vietnam to deliver part of the Digital Post project and collaborated with other managers to take care of the growth of the newly created office in Saigon.
- Played a crucial role in internationalization activities, spreading the organizational culture, coaching, and building efficient cooperation across offices and countries. The office in Vietnam is now a well-functioning Netcompany office.
- Served as a scrum master on the core product team of the UK COVID Pass project: cooperated with stakeholders and supervised selected technical areas of the project, which is featured as an example of a professional operation.
- Served as a delivery unit coordinator for UK projects in Poland: supervised all Netcompany projects for UK-based clients involving the Polish office, ensuring effective cooperation and project success across offices and countries.
- Managed and/or participated in recruitment, performance evaluations, mentoring, workshops, seminars, employer branding, building and maintaining relations with clients, sales, and development of internal processes.
Agile/DevOps Trainer
2018 - 2021
Netcompany
- Conducted many workshops and seminars on DevOps, programming, business, Agile/Scrum, and soft skills for participants were from Poland, Denmark, Norway, the UK, and Vietnam.
- Covered a wide range of topics, including client engagement, daily communication and status reporting, an operating model for multinational projects, and basic and advanced seminars about Scrum and Agile practices.
- Served as the global leader of the Netcompany CoE. Developed and delivered DevOps courses and other technical and soft-skill workshops remotely and in Warsaw, Copenhagen, and Ho Chi Minh City.
- Lectured on Agile and Scrum at the Warsaw University of Technology, introducing students to the fascinating world of Agile.
Senior Consultant
2018 - 2020
Netcompany
- Served as a scrum master or team manager on several projects simultaneously and managed teams in SAFe-based projects with Scrum, Kanban, and the Netcompany methodology.
- Delivered the Digital Post project for the Danish Agency of Digitization and internal DevOps accelerator projects, serving as the team manager and scrum master.
- Led a major project for ICI, Denmark's national debt management system: processed thousands of cases that were frozen in an ambiguous state due to legal and technical issues in the prior system and returned billions of Danish kroner to the budget.
- Led the team to execute a DevOps transformation on the ICI project: introduced IaC, configuration as code (CaC), containerization, and orchestration to the project using Docker and OpenShift.
- Collaborated with the team to set up and maintain 150+ environments with 20+ apps each (containerized and infrastructure), providing complete automation and a one-click, 10-minute process to create parameterized environments.
- Owned and/or participated in daily cooperation with clients, performance appraisals, recruitment, organization of team events, internationalization, and architecture and design for various systems.
- Mentored six colleagues, helping them grow at Netcompany.
Consultant
2015 - 2017
Netcompany
- Served as a consultant, Java developer, DevOps engineer, team lead, or scrum master to deliver several products for Danish clients, including Banedanmark and the Danish Ministry of Taxation.
- Led a Scrum team to achieve its goals within the demanding conditions of the ICI project involving 250+ people. This was my first role as scrum master, and we applied SAFe.
- Owned the development and maintenance of Java-based applications, using a tech stack of Java 8, Groovy, Oracle Service Bus, Oracle WebLogic, ELK Stack, Bash, Gradle, Jenkins, and Puppet. Also owned code reviews, automated testing, and DevOps flows.
- Participated in employer branding and internationalization activities, was a key player in the life of our growing Netcompany office in Poland, and organized team events.
- Developed and maintained an enterprise service bus and related applications for Banedamark, the Danish railway infrastructure.
Software Developer
2014 - 2015
Sabre
- Served on the Sabre rail team, applying Scrum to develop software that unified shopping, booking, and pricing processes for different vendors. Agencies from several countries used the product.
- Conducted demo sessions and workshops and collaborated with international clients, including SNCF, Amtrak, Russian Rails, and Trenitalia. The clients were engaged and happy with the quality of the team's services.
- Focused mainly on programming, automated testing, code reviews, and maintaining DevOps flows while serving as a developer on a Scrum team.
- Took responsibility for two important applications as a system owner and quickly gained the trust of my team.
Java Developer
2013 - 2014
SoInteractive
- Worked on a team project to build a data analysis solution for a company in the airline industry.
- Built OLAP cubes for a big data project, using Java, Apache HBase, and PostgreSQL. Also worked with Twitter and Facebook APIs.
- Focused mainly on programming, testing, and code reviews, expanding my full-stack engineering capabilities.
Java Developer (Intern)
2013 - 2013
Sabre
- Joined the air connectivity team working on integration components for the airline industry.
- Co-developed a product for collecting booking and ticketing data and feeding it to various booking portals.
- Focused mainly on programming and automated testing as a member of a well-functioning Scrum team.
Project History
NHS COVID Pass for the UK National Health Service
Co-developed a product that significantly improved the comfort of traveling and using various services for millions of UK citizens during the pandemic.
Millions of UK citizens use the NHS COVID Pass system to access details on their vaccinations, tests, and COVID-19 history and generate certificates with QR codes following international standards. The QR codes prove and verify the user's COVID-19 status and history.
As a scrum master, I focused on the team topology and mindset, and I managed the core product team from a hierarchical perspective. As the primary operational manager, I worked closely with the product manager from Netcompany and management from the client side to control the project and maximize the value of the product. I collaborated with stakeholders and supervised selected technical areas—mainly the back end and infrastructure layers of the solution. As the most experienced agilist on the project, I supported other managers and teams.
As a scrum master, I focused on the team topology and mindset, and I managed the core product team from a hierarchical perspective. As the primary operational manager, I worked closely with the product manager from Netcompany and management from the client side to control the project and maximize the value of the product. I collaborated with stakeholders and supervised selected technical areas—mainly the back end and infrastructure layers of the solution. As the most experienced agilist on the project, I supported other managers and teams.
FAST for the UK Army
Co-developed a system that improved the operational efficiency of the UK Army.
I was a scrum master for the core (and largest) Scrum team, which collaborated with other teams to develop a set of services that improved the operational efficiency of the UK Army. Due to the nature of the project, I cannot share additional information.
New Generation of Digital Post for the Danish Agency for Digitization
Managed a team to build parts of a new generation of Digital Post for Denmark. Millions of Danish citizens and public authorities use the system for efficient communication.
The new generation of Digital Post is a unique and critical system that integrates with tens of other applications used as parts of the system of Danish public services. Digital Post is used to transfer information between citizens of Denmark and various public authorities and internally between public authorities.
I managed a platform team that provided infrastructure, DevOps flows, and automation for feature teams and collaborated with other managers and teams. I worked on the project from several locations, including Poland, Vietnam (nine months), and Denmark, leading selected technical areas of the project and an international team.
I managed a platform team that provided infrastructure, DevOps flows, and automation for feature teams and collaborated with other managers and teams. I worked on the project from several locations, including Poland, Vietnam (nine months), and Denmark, leading selected technical areas of the project and an international team.
ICI | National System of Debt Management in Denmark for the Danish Ministry of Taxation
Led a major project to process thousands of cases that were frozen in an ambiguous state due to legal and technical issues in the prior system and returned billions of Danish kroner to the budget.
The Danish Ministry of Taxation uses the new system to manage debt in Denmark. I was the scrum master and manager of the DevOps team for this SAFe project with 250+ people involved. I collaborated with stakeholders and other teams and supervised selected technical areas.
My team executed a DevOps transformation by introducing IaC, CaC, containerization, and orchestration, using Docker and OpenShift. We set up and maintained 150+ environments with 20+ apps each (containerized and infrastructure), providing complete automation and a one-click, 10-minute process to create parameterized environments.
My team executed a DevOps transformation by introducing IaC, CaC, containerization, and orchestration, using Docker and OpenShift. We set up and maintained 150+ environments with 20+ apps each (containerized and infrastructure), providing complete automation and a one-click, 10-minute process to create parameterized environments.
Education
2011 - 2015
Engineer's Degree in Computer Science
AGH University of Science and Technology - Cracow, Poland
Certifications
JANUARY 2022 - PRESENT
Professional Scrum Developer (PSD)
Scrum.org
DECEMBER 2021 - PRESENT
Professional Scrum Master II (PSM II)
Scrum.org
MAY 2021 - PRESENT
Professional Scrum Product Owner I (PSPO I)
Scrum.org
JANUARY 2019 - PRESENT
Professional Scrum Master I (PSM I)
Scrum.org
JANUARY 2017 - PRESENT
Oracle Certified Professional, Java SE 8 Programmer
Oracle
MARCH 2016 - PRESENT
Oracle Certified Associate, Java SE 8 Programmer
Oracle
Skills
Tools
Jira, Jenkins
Paradigms
Scrum, DevOps, Agile Project Management, Agile Product Management, Agile Software Development, Azure DevOps, Kanban, Agile
Platforms
Docker, OpenShift
Other
Team Building, Team Leadership, Java, Java 8, Agile Coaching, Training, Cloud, Full-stack, Programming, Automated Testing, Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), Scaling, Agile Scaling Frameworks
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