Matej Cica, Developer in Sarajevo, Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bosnia and Herzegovina

Matej Cica

Software Developer

Location
Sarajevo, Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bosnia and Herzegovina
Toptal Member Since
December 6, 2015

Matej is an experienced software engineer with a strong background in a variety of Microsoft technologies and open source technologies such as Ruby on Rails. He is proficient in dealing with big distributed data systems, such as banking and financial systems. Matej is a self-motivated individual who is deadline focused and thorough in his approach to work.

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Portfolio

Andopen Gifts Limited
Ruby, Ruby on Rails (RoR), Sidekiq, PostgreSQL, Redis, AWS CLI...
Content Creators Inc
Ruby, Ruby on Rails (RoR), Sidekiq, Redis, AWS CLI, Amazon S3 (AWS S3)...
Asset Panda LLC
Ruby, Ruby on Rails (RoR), Unicorn, Sidekiq, RSpec, Capistrano, New Relic...

Location

Sarajevo, Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bosnia and Herzegovina

Availability

Part-time

Preferred Environment

Git, Sublime Text, Ubuntu, Linux

The most amazing...

...thing I've coded is an engine for processing, generating, and parsing SWIFT transactions and messages.

Work Experience

2022 - 2023

Lead Backend (Ruby on Rails) Engineer

Andopen Gifts Limited
  • Worked directly with Airbnb's and Andopen's managers on AirbnbLove site (www.airbnblove.com).
  • My responsibilities included everything from planning and design of new features to actual implementation and support.
  • Did refactoring and optimization of queries used on most common application endpoints.
  • Did a third party API integrations, wrote tests and made sure every newly developed feature is covered by test cases.
  • Participated in code reviews process for other developers.
Technologies: Ruby, Ruby on Rails (RoR), Sidekiq, PostgreSQL, Redis, AWS CLI, Amazon S3 (AWS S3), jQuery, REST APIs
2021 - 2022

Lead Ruby on Rails Engineer

Content Creators Inc
  • My main responsibility was backend development, but I did wear many hats (web/front-end development, DevOps related work, etc).
  • Participating in the whole process from planning to implementation and delivery of all new features.
  • Preparing and conducting interviews for new employees.
  • Did code reviews and guidance for less experienced developers.
Technologies: Ruby, Ruby on Rails (RoR), Sidekiq, Redis, AWS CLI, Amazon S3 (AWS S3), Video Transcoding, Elasticsearch, MongoDB, Stripe, Heroku, ActionCable, REST APIs, jQuery
2020 - 2021

Senior Ruby on Rails Dev

Asset Panda LLC
  • Implemented communication between microservices using RabbitMQ.
  • Optimized most used features, using high quality code standards and techniques.
  • Query optimization for most critical endpoints of the system.
  • Other performance improvements (front-end related).
  • Did code reviews and guidance for other developers.
Technologies: Ruby, Ruby on Rails (RoR), Unicorn, Sidekiq, RSpec, Capistrano, New Relic, MySQL, MongoDB, RabbitMQ, Redis, jQuery, JavaScript, Git, REST APIs
2020 - 2020

Ruby on Rails Engineer

ReadyPoint, Inc
  • Worked on optimizing old features and some legacy code refactorings.
  • Implemented new features related to Healthcare domain.
  • Tested newly implemented features by writing tests and making sure code is covered with tests.
Technologies: Ruby on Rails (RoR), JavaScript, RSpec, MySQL, Ruby, Redis, jQuery, Git
2019 - 2020

Technical Team Lead/Senior Ruby on Rails Engineer

Red Panda Software
  • Developed back-end functionalities using Ruby on Rails technology stack. The back end was a cloud-hosted, real-time offer and management solution: an API that was used by multiple clients.
  • Planned and implemented new features. Contributed to business decisions like prioritization of tasks and estimates for new features. Introduced git-flow branching model and improved the overall development process.
  • Reviewed code for other team members and made sure that code quality is of a high level by following the latest best practices and standards proposed by the Ruby/Rails community.
  • Identified system weak points and optimized critical parts of the system. Refactored the system's most used endpoints and improved response time by more than 200%.
  • Made architectural decisions like choosing the best application and web server, scaling the API by moving I/O intensive tasks to asynchronous/background processing (Sidekiq), and more.
Technologies: Git, Mercurial, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Heroku, Docker, Redis, PostgreSQL, APIs, Ruby on Rails (RoR), Ruby
2018 - 2019

Senior Ruby on Rails Engineer

Klika d.o.o.
  • Contributed to the development of a fintech project and provided performance troubleshooting and optimizations.
  • Developed primarily back-end (microservices, REST API integrations, etc.) features but contributed to the full stack.
  • Implemented solutions and delivered high-quality software based on Ruby on Rails.
  • Applied software standards of clean code and proven optimization techniques.
  • Created, maintained, and debugged software.
  • Planned and defined requirements, creating software designs and translating them into code.
Technologies: XML, REST APIs, NGINX, Docker, Fintech, Microservices, JSON Web Tokens (JWT), RabbitMQ, MySQL, Ruby on Rails (RoR), Ruby
2017 - 2018

Lead Software Engineer

OSB IT and Engineering
  • Managed a team of five people, coaching and mentoring them as well as supervising their day to day activities.
  • Reviewed code and developed on front-end projects.
  • Led the team as scrum master.
Technologies: Git, MySQL, Ruby on Rails (RoR), Ruby, jQuery, JavaScript, REST APIs
2016 - 2017

Senior Ruby on Rails Engineer

Genijalno.ba
  • Contributed to the development of a number of small projects.
  • Provided full-stack development.
  • Managed a small team and reviewed code.
  • Set project architecture.
Technologies: Node.js, React, PostgreSQL, Ruby on Rails (RoR), Ruby, REST APIs, jQuery, Redis
2016 - 2016

Senior Ruby on Rails Engineer

Pulsr (via Toptal)
  • Worked on a back-end REST API.
  • Implemented Redis caching for the REST API.
  • Worked with geospatial queries (PostGIS) and geocoding.
  • Refactored some of the previously implemented features like importing events and venues from external APIs (Eventful/Foursquare).
  • Participated in code reviews.
  • Implemented API versioning and authentication.
  • Worked on parsing tweets ingested from Twitter, using Twitter Stream.
  • Refactored notifications (SMS, email, push notifications).
  • Fixed bugs.
Technologies: Amazon S3 (AWS S3), Amazon EC2, Linux, Git, Sidekiq, PostGIS, JSON, REST, Foursquare API, Twilio API, Twitter API, Elasticsearch, Redis, PostgreSQL, Ruby on Rails (RoR), Ruby, REST APIs
2016 - 2016

Senior Ruby on Rails Engineer

Stowaway Cosmetics (via Toptal)
  • Developed architecture for a new REST API used for an eCommerce site.
  • Worked on a REST API that uses Spree eCommerce framework.
  • Created Ansible scripts to migrate data from an Amazon RDS instance to Heroku.
  • Helped to set up and deploy a new API to Heroku.
  • Participated in code reviews.
Technologies: Spree, JSON, REST APIs, Ansible, Heroku, PostgreSQL, Ruby on Rails (RoR), Ruby, jQuery
2013 - 2016

Senior Software Engineer

Maestral Solutions
  • Worked on several projects as a full-stack developer using a broad range of technologies and following the Agile and Scrum methodologies of software development.
  • Worked on creating a powerful survey engine that enables company-wide management of surveys.
  • Worked on a promotions management web app used for creating and scheduling effective promotion campaigns, contests, and events for a given organization.
  • Worked on a hybrid mobile app (PhoneGap + Ionic framework + AngularJS) used for time tracking employees or members of a given organization.
  • Worked on a web app that provides information to hunters about planning hunting season. The app provides services for scheduling and reservation of hunting stands and marking the stands using Google Maps.
  • Worked on a social network site intended for hunters. The app provides several advanced functionalities like a friends suggestion engine, notifications, messaging, content sharing, and integration with other popular social networks like Facebook, Google+, and Twitter.
Technologies: Node.js, Angular, jQuery, JavaScript, Facebook API, Bootstrap, CSS, HTML5, PhoneGap, SQL, SignalR, ASP.NET, LINQ, Entity Framework, ASP.NET MVC, Web API, Service, C#, .NET, Redis, MongoDB, PostgreSQL, Ruby on Rails (RoR), Ruby, REST APIs
2011 - 2013

Software Engineer

Raiffeisen Bank
  • Worked on core banking services and financial systems that supported more than a million financial transactions per day.
  • Worked with large, complex, and distributed databases.
  • Exposed to the complexities on all levels and phases of the software development cycle.
  • Worked on various optimizations processes (SQL queries, reporting services, WCF services optimization, and configuration).
  • Provided real-time support for a large number of customers.
  • Created a powerful engine that deals with processing and generation of SWIFT transactions.
  • Worked on business and transaction rule engines that represent an important part of the core of banking system.
  • Worked on creating e-banking and mobile banking services.
Technologies: Reporting, WCF Web Services, TFS, Microsoft SQL Server, Windows Services, Web Forms, Windows Forms (WinForms), C#, VB.NET, Visual Basic, REST APIs
2011 - 2011

Junior .NET Developer

ComTrade
  • Worked primarily on the back end.
  • Wrote and managed IVR Scripts.
  • Parsed a variety of XML messages.
  • Contributed to service integration with BH Telecom.
  • Developed SMS message processing.
Technologies: WCF Web Services, Subversion (SVN), SQL, LINQ, Entity Framework, C++, C#, Windows Services, Web Services, ASP.NET MVC

Experience

Takko App

Takko is a social platform for content creators. It enables creators to monetize their content. It's a place where content creators can meet and share ideas and resources, collaborate, and help one another. The system is composed of REST API written in Ruby on Rails and an iOS app.

Personalised Offers

Personalised Offers is Flooid’s cloud-hosted, real-time offer and voucher management solution. Retailers with Personalised Offers can:
- Create, manage and validate their own vouchers, and vouchers created by third parties across all channels in real time
- Consolidate a customer’s vouchers and third party coupons in a cloud-based offer wallet
- Link vouchers and coupons to a sales-channel owned basket benefit and deliver true omnichannel offers
- Use single or multiple linked events to influence a customer’s behaviours and journey
- Utilize the solution as a “loyalty lite”, managing programmes and automatically rewarding customer behavior
- Manage staff discounts, and initial “friends & family” offers or discounts
Technologies used: Ruby, Ruby on Rails, PostgreSQL, Redis, Sidekiq, Git, Mercurial, REST API integrations, Javascript, Angular, HTML5, CSS3, Heroku, Google Cloud Platform, Azure, Docker, Nginx

Natixis/Fidor

https://www.natixis.com/natixis/jcms/j_6/en/home
Natixis is a French corporate and investment bank created in November 2006 from the merger of the asset management and investment banking operations of Natexis Banque Populaire and IXIS, the second-largest banking player in France. I was hired as a senior Ruby on Rails developer to help build a back end which is based on microservice architecture. The back end uses the core banking system of Fidor, a German digital bank and among the world's top fintech companies, to provide support for payments, money transfers, and other banking-related things. The back end is consumed by mobile devices through an app called Banxy. There are Android and iOS versions of the mobile apps. Natixis' back end relies on some third-party services, including Siron, IDnow, and CBS.

Technologies used: Ruby, Ruby on Rails, Rspec, MySQL, Linux, Docker, Jenkins, REST API, RabbitMQ, Microservice Architecture, Git, jQuery

Comparative Agility

https://www.comparativeagility.com
Comparative Agility is a startup, agility assessment and continuous improvement platform. With Comparative Agility you gain the insights and identify concrete areas of improvement inside your company, where you can make a meaningful difference.
Technologies used: Ruby, Ruby on Rails, Rspec, PostgreSQL, Git, Vue.js, REST API, Heroku

Pulsr (via Toptal)

­Pulsr is a social discovery application meant to answer the age ­old question "What should we do tonight?"

By leveraging a large database of events and local businesses, and creating new channels for ambient social dialogue, Pulsr is an invaluable tool in leading a vibrant social life; thereby empowering people to get up and get out.

Stowaway Cosmetics (via Toptal)

Stowaway Cosmetics is an eCommerce site specialized in selling makeup. I was hired to build a new REST API that provides endpoints for an isomorphic app (Node.js and React with Redux), using the Spree eCcommerce framework. Besides that, I wrote migration scripts in Ansible, to migrate the database from AWS RDS to Heroku.

Technologies used: Ruby, Ruby on Rails, Spree framework, PostgreSQL, Node.js, React.js, Redux, AWS, Heroku, and Ansible.

Save Stand

http://www.savestand.com
Save Stand is a web app that provides information to hunters about planning hunting season and hunting days. The application provides services for scheduling and reservation of hunting stands so hunters can easily ensure their spot and plan their hunting seasons in the future.

Technologies used: Ruby on Rails, PostgreSQL, jQuery, Facebook API, Google API, Google Maps, Stripe, Amazon AWS

Trophy Stack

Trophy Stack is one of the leading web apps for amateur hunters in the United States. It’s a social network site for hunters.
Technologies used: Ruby on Rails, PostgreSQL, Redis, jQuery, Facebook API, Google API, Twitter API, Amazon AWS

Promotions Management

Promotions Management is a web app used for creating and scheduling effective promotion campaigns, contests, and events for a given organization.
Technologies used: Node.js, Backbone.js, MongoDB

Immediate Insights

Immediate Insights is a powerful survey engine that enables survey management. It can be used as a stand-alone service to deploy surveys on your website(s) and client sites.
Technologies used: C#, WCF Services, ASP.NET MVC, Entity Framework, LINQ, ASP.NET SignalR, SQL Server, MongoDB, jQuery.

Atlas

http://www.peoplenet.com
Atlas is a PhoneGap app used for time tracking employees or members of a given organization.
Technologies used: C#, WCF Services, Web API, Windows Azure, Entity Framework, LINQ, SQL Server, AngularJS, PhoneGap, jQuery mobile

Skills

Languages

SQL, HTML5, Ruby, JavaScript, XML, Unicorn

Frameworks

AngularJS, Ruby on Rails (RoR), minitest, Sails.js, Bootstrap 3, Bootstrap, JSON Web Tokens (JWT), ActionCable

Libraries/APIs

REST APIs, jQuery, Sidekiq, Delayed Job, Node.js, Backbone.js, Web API, Facebook API, Twitter API, Twilio API, Foursquare API, LINQ, Stripe

Tools

Bitbucket, Sublime Text, Git, RSpec, GitLab, GitHub, NGINX, RabbitMQ, Mercurial, Subversion (SVN), Capistrano, AWS CLI

Paradigms

Agile Software Development, Scrum, Object-oriented Programming (OOP), Microservices Architecture, Microservices, REST, Unit Testing

Platforms

Heroku, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Linux, Amazon EC2, Ubuntu, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Azure, Docker, New Relic

Storage

PostgreSQL, JSON, Redis, MongoDB, MySQL, Elasticsearch, Amazon S3 (AWS S3), PostGIS

Other

Fintech, RESTful Microservices, APIs, Reporting, Web Services, Video Transcoding

Education

2005 - 2011

Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science

Univerzitet Dzemal Bijedic - Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina