Matei Rogoz
Verified Expert in Engineering
APIs Developer
Bucharest, Romania
Toptal member since November 13, 2020
Matei is a talented developer and a true digital nomad. This freedom triggers ingenuity, inspiring him to build products from scratch and nurture them into blossoming businesses. He's worn multiple hats and managed companies and engineering teams while keeping an eye on the market. His extensive coding practice and eight years of building digital products enable him to deliver impactful and marketable solutions, managing to continuously engineer successful experiences for the end-customer.
Portfolio
Experience
- MySQL - 12 years
- PHP - 12 years
- JavaScript - 11 years
- APIs - 10 years
- Symfony - 9 years
- Node.js - 6 years
- React - 5 years
- Python - 5 years
Availability
Preferred Environment
DigitalOcean, Git, Linux, JetBrains, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Docker, PHP, Python
The most amazing...
...platform I've built from scratch, which blossomed into a successful and fully-fledged company, is the Zeelo MVP.
Work Experience
Senior Software Engineer and Team Lead (via Toptal)
Azrieli Ecommerce Ltd.
- Worked on rebuilding the Azrieli eCommerce platform with modern technologies in a scalable and maintainable way, using a new microservice architecture employing frameworks such as Symfony, Sylius (eCommerce), Akeneo (PIM), and Flask.
- Led the back-end team, built efficient team processes, performed extensive and intensive code reviews, led various meetings based on the Agile methodology, maintained up-to-date and strict coding standards, and conducted interviews.
- Worked closely with our solutions architect and CTO to ensure the execution of the feature roadmap is on track.
- Balanced an aggressive feature development timeline with the means of the team in order to keep technological debt at a minimum and maintain high levels of maintainability and stability in our codebase and system.
- Built an in-house sprint and team metrics tool that is available for all teams so leadership can make more data-driven decisions and more easily monitor the teams’ evolution from sprint to sprint.
- Performed extensive optimizations on the entire codebase in order to reduce database load and costs by more than 50%.
Co-founder & CTO
Kappa London
- Managed the Kappa consulting business and our engineering team.
- Maintained a close relationship with our clients to understand their needs and deliver the best possible solution for their business.
- Built in-house tools to assist with marketing, client experience, client relationship, management, and operations.
- Developed infrastructure, DevOps solutions, and contributed to back-end and front-end development on multiple projects.
- Mentored junior developers, performed code reviews, and ensured the quality of end products.
- Determined projects' scopes, created work plans and timelines, and generated budgets.
Software Engineer
Zeelo Ltd.
- Designed the Zeelo system and determined a plan of development for the MVP.
- Led the development team of the Zeelo MVP, which the client brought to market.
- Developed the infrastructure and the back-end system and contributed to the front-end side, as well.
- Maintained the Zeelo platform and continued to develop new features as it grew in popularity.
- Collaborated with the growing developer team to improve scalability using hexagonal architecture, CQRS, and event sourcing.
Full-stack Developer
Freelance
- Developed multiple systems in PHP and custom modules for content management systems (Expression Engine, WordPress, and Craft CMS).
- Implemented multiple web platforms and APIs using the Laravel framework and Symfony.
- Developed eCommerce systems with multiple payment integrations.
- Developed responsive user interfaces using AngularJS and React.
- Implemented in-depth automations and scraping tools using PhantomJS.
- Collaborated with clients to help them make the best technology decisions for their businesses.
Experience
Zeelo
https://zeelo.coSome of the platform's functionalities are the ability to purchase tickets on any bus route, email and SMS trip reminders, the generation of PDF tickets, an admin panel with different permission levels for general management, route creation, and customer support. It can also create private rides and invite other people to join. There is a driver web app used for tracking and checking passengers' tickets, and it is integrated with a 3rd-party CRM.
I was present from the beginning of this startup. I designed the Zeelo system from scratch, created a development plan, and then built the MVP, which they brought to market.
As the platform grew, I continued to maintain and improve it, adding new features.
During my time here, I witnessed Zeelo blossom into a successful company with a large user base. I worked with the growing developer team to improve its scalability using hexagonal architecture, event sourcing, and CQRS with Symfony.
Bryant Dental
https://bryant.dentalBryant Dental was one of our clients at Kappa London. We were hired to build a new website for their business, improve their web presence, and add eCommerce functionality.
I designed the system and infrastructure, managed the development team, and worked on the back-end side, most notably delivering the required eCommerce functionality through a REST API and developing custom features for the store's administration panel.
The rest of the team worked on design and branding. Their effort was stellar and the website managed to get an honorable mention from Awwwards.
Bloomd
The platform matches users based on certain factors. Users can then schedule an appointment and engage in conversation, either through text, audio, or video.
I was the back-end developer. I designed the system, infrastructure, and the REST API. Together with one other front-end developer and one designer, we built the MVP, which was then launched. We kept maintaining it and adding new features over time.
First Finishes
Users could register either as customers or as tradespeople on the platform. Customers could post different types of projects they needed to do (e.g., construction projects), and tradespeople would receive notifications on new projects based on their skills, location, and other factors. Tradespeople could then bid on the projects they received, and the customer would accept one or more of them. To bid, tradespeople had to buy credits, out of which a certain amount was spent on each bid. The platform also had an administration panel.
I was hired to take over the development of the platform, which was not in great shape and had multiple issues, especially with the notification and bidding system. I was the only developer. I refactored parts of the system and released a safe and stable version.
I continued to maintain the platform and add features.
Honor Cycles
It allowed users to create an account, save their bikes, and purchase one-off repair services or subscriptions that offered them regular monthly/yearly checks and repairs. The system also had an admin panel and was integrated with the Lightspeed POS system, which they used in their repair shop. The platform also had an administration platform.
I was the lead and back-end developer. I designed the system, built the platform, and delivered it to the client together with another front-end developer.
HeroesMaker
The app allowed users to choose from multiple resume templates and easily add in their own information. Users could then download a PDF version of their resume. They could also manage multiple versions of their resumes.
I was the only developer. I designed the system and infrastructure and built the app. I continued to maintain it and add features.
MK Labs
Having worked with Expression Engine a lot, one of my friends and I decided to build custom modules for the CMS, polish others we had already built, and sell them online. Thus, we created MK Labs. We sold some copies of the modules and provided support and fixes for some time. Expression Engine evolved into newer versions. We lacked the time to upgrade our modules, and eventually, we closed the store.
I worked on developing the modules and conducted another friend who provided a helping hand. I also worked on building the MK Labs store.
Education
Bachelor's Degree in Mathematics and Computer Science
University of Bucharest - Bucharest, Romania
High School Diploma in Informatics and Applied Mathematics
National College of Informatics "Tudor Vianu" - Bucharest, Romania
Skills
Libraries/APIs
jQuery, REST APIs, Doctrine, Stripe, Jira REST API, API Development, React, Node.js, Stripe API, Facebook API, Instagram API, Twilio API, NetSuite API, PayPal API, PhantomJS, Vue, Braintree API, X (formerly Twitter) API, OpenAI API
Tools
PhpStorm, Git, Slack, GitHub, Akeneo, Behat, FileZilla, PuTTY, Jira, Bitbucket, wkhtmltopdf, JetBrains, Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS), Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS), NPM, Composer, AWS CLI, Adobe Photoshop, Logic Pro, NGINX, RabbitMQ, Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS), Amazon EKS, Amazon CloudWatch, Beanstalk, Terraform, AWS Fargate
Languages
PHP, JavaScript, CSS, HTML, Sass, Less, SCSS, Python, Bash, Pine Script, TypeScript, SQL, Java, MQL5
Frameworks
Laravel, Symfony, Bootstrap, Twig, PHPUnit, Sylius, CodeIgniter, Tailwind CSS, OAuth 2, Angular, Yii, Flask, Cypress, Django, React Native, Next.js
Paradigms
Model View Controller (MVC), Agile, Agile Software Development, API Architecture, Test-driven Development (TDD), CQRS, Event Sourcing, Behavior-driven Development (BDD), Microservices
Storage
MySQL, JSON, Redis, Elasticsearch, Amazon S3 (AWS S3), PostgreSQL, NoSQL, MariaDB, MongoDB, Google Cloud
Platforms
WordPress, Linux, DigitalOcean, Apache2, Docker, OpenCart, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Kubernetes, Amazon EC2, Craft CMS, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), AWS Lambda
Other
ExpressionEngine, Blade, Responsive UI, Ajax, Web Scraping, SaaS, Back-end, RESTful Web Services, APIs, API Integration, Website Data Scraping, Code Review, Cost Management, Full-stack, Web Development, Back-end Development, Debugging, Software as a Service (SaaS), Computer Science, Laravel Forge, Ubuntu Server, Payment Gateways, Web Hosting & Domain Setup, Creativity, Communication, Conflict Resolution, Teamwork, Leadership, Front-end, Amazon RDS, GitHub Actions, Technical Leadership, Open Source, Big Data, Concurrency, Data Cleansing, Data Handling, Transactions, Architecture, Relational Database Services (RDS), Hexagonal Architecture, Linux Server Administration, Beanstalkd, CI/CD Pipelines, PayPal, TradingView, Trading Bots, Domain-driven Design (DDD), Big Data Architecture, AWS WAF, ECS
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