
Ivan Čuljak
Verified Expert in Engineering
Distributed Systems Developer
Zagreb, Croatia
Toptal member since December 6, 2016
Ivan grew into a head of technology, then upskilled himself as a lead developer for a business intelligence company specializing in sports betting clients. In 2016, he founded his own company, grew the team to 15, then chose to move forward as a solo cloud expert. Ivan's passion lies in building cloud solutions with the least possible complexity and maintenance. His tools of choice are Azure and C#. Ivan is a community leader and international speaker and was a lecturer at three universities.
Portfolio
Experience
- ASP.NET - 20 years
- C# - 20 years
- Distributed Systems - 16 years
- Software Architecture - 14 years
- DevOps - 12 years
- Azure - 11 years
- Solution Architecture - 8 years
- Infrastructure as Code (IaC) - 6 years
Availability
Preferred Environment
Pulumi, Octopus Deploy, Azure DevOps, Azure, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Linode
The most amazing...
...multi-cloud system I've built spins up and down crawlers, executing tasks in an elegant, mostly serverless, and multi-tenant way.
Work Experience
Cloud Solution Architect | Software Engineer | Owner
Celeste Maze, Inc.
- Salvaged a lot of projects which were wrecks and either continued developing new features or handed them back to the in-house development teams.
- Designed more modern cloud solutions, some of which included hybrid and mobile services.
- Consulted clients from early-stage startups to Fortune 500 companies on their cloud solutions and the state of their development.
- Performed as a speaker in over 75 talks at regular international conferences, mostly about serverless and modern cloud solutions.
- Taught at three universities for over four years as a regular guest lecturer.
C# Developer
Tune IT d.o.o.
- Developed a system for the hospitality sector consisting of an easy-to-use but advanced mobile app for clients with social network integrations, a mobile app for waiters, a web app for back-office operations, etc.
- Implemented a loyalty system into an existing system.
- Developed a system that connected to a loyalty system and allowed our client to organize various campaigns, target specific users, and track their reactions.
- Developed a few proof-of-concept web and mobile apps for the betting sector.
- Consulted various companies regarding Xamarin development.
- Taught topics at Algebra Zagreb as a Microsoft Certified Trainer.
Head of Technology
Geoservis d.o.o.
- Implemented the first GPS virtual reference stations network in the region.
- Implemented various algorithms (and tweaked them up to some point) for processing GPS data.
- Developed various tools to speed up the processing of point cloud acquired using terrestrial 3D laser scanners.
- Developed various AutoCAD and Excel add-ons to speed up and automate data processing.
- Organized and led internal education for over 100 employees.
Experience
Spectral Core
• Supported the evolution of a desktop tool into a massively parallel cloud tool spanning across clusters.
• Established the right cybersecurity posture from the get-go.
• Architected the cloud part of a new solution.
• Worked closely with the development team.
• Worked with key customers to fully understand their needs and cloud environment limitations due to corporate-specific policies and architecting solutions for those.
• Handled the architecture and the integration of two solutions into Azure Marketplace, Google Cloud Marketplace, and AWS Marketplace.
Reinsurance Industry
• Optimized existing cloud solutions for performance, cost gains, and cybersecurity.
• Architected various hybrid and cloud-native solutions for multiple teams.
• Salvaged multiple third-party cloud solutions.
• Architected and built a platform to enable actuaries to develop and run their models.
• Provided constant supervision of cloud development, advisory on improvements, and education on the reasons.
Lawn and Garden Care Service
B2C Insurance Claims Solution
Tobacco Industry
• Audited a non-working cloud and field solution built by a huge consultancy company.
• Proposed a new architecture.
• Worked closely with decision-makers on how to best get to their desired outcome.
Card Processor
TDK
Video Streaming Solution
Remote IT Worker Onboarding Solution
Wine Importer
Fortune 500 Clothing Retailer
• Revamped the cybersecurity posture of a risky solution targeting underage girls.
• Refactored all the processes, resulting in significant performance improvements and usability, which led to increased adoption.
• Architected and built various media solutions for automated inspection and streaming.
Identity and Access Management (IAM) Industry
Security Solution | Intellectual Property
German Public Radio and TV Broadcaster
• Salvaged a solution for gathering user-generated content.
• Architected the "next version," which automatically validated and inspected the content like photos, videos, audio, and text.
• Built a search engine on top of the gathered data to fetch "intelligence" from gathered content.
• Upskilled a new internal team to take over.
Croatian National Radio and TV Network
Croatian Post
Large-scale Ticket Verification Solution
FIFA
Solution and Software Architecture for the Hospitality Sector
Fraud Detection | Sports Betting Industry
Certifications
Microsoft MVP for Azure
Microsoft
Skills
Tools
Azure App Service, Azure Logic Apps, GitHub, Jira, Alfresco
Languages
C#, SQL
Frameworks
.NET Core, ASP.NET, .NET, ASP.NET Core
Paradigms
DevOps, API Architecture, Azure DevOps, Automated Testing, Agile
Platforms
Azure, Azure Marketplace, Azure Functions, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Kubernetes, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Linode
Storage
Oracle Cloud
Other
Serverless, Distributed Systems, Custom Solutions, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), Cloud Infrastructure, Pulumi, Architecture, Task Automation, Data Scraping, Solution Architecture, Enterprise Architecture, Azure Durable Functions, Cloud Architecture, Software Architecture, GitHub Actions, Octopus Deploy, Web Scraping, Windows Services, Writing & Editing, Xamarin.Forms, Azure Databricks
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