Pantelis Vratsalis, Developer in Sparti, Laconia, Greece
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Pantelis Vratsalis

Verified Expert  in Engineering

FastAPI Developer

Sparti, Laconia, Greece

Toptal member since January 8, 2014

Bio

Pantelis is an experienced full-stack engineer with expertise in Python, Ruby, and JavaScript. He's worked with Flask, FastAPI, React, Vue, and Ruby on Rails for almost a decade. In addition to coding, Pantelis has also served as an engineering manager for three years, building, growing, and managing teams and individual contributors.

Portfolio

Hotjar
Python, PostgreSQL, Flask, FastAPI, RabbitMQ, Kubernetes, React, Node.js, REST
Mattermost
Go, PostgreSQL, React, REST
AskBeat
Prometheus, React, Ruby on Rails (RoR), REST, FastAPI

Experience

  • REST - 11 years
  • Python - 10 years
  • React - 8 years
  • Ruby on Rails (RoR) - 8 years
  • Flask - 6 years
  • Apache Kafka - 4 years
  • FastAPI - 2 years
  • GraphQL - 1 year

Availability

Part-time

Preferred Environment

Python, Git, Kubernetes, React, PostgreSQL, FastAPI, Flask, Apache Kafka

The most amazing...

...thing I've coded is a retargeting DSP for programmatic advertising. It was a great challenge due to the complexity and traffic scale (250,000 requests/second).

Work Experience

Senior Engineering Manager

2020 - 2024
Hotjar
  • Bootstrapped a new team and set the direction (North Star) for the company's security and authentication/authorization.
  • Built, as a part of the platform team, microservices for authentication and authorization to enable other services to be extracted from the monolith.
  • Set up security best practices and automated tests in SDLC.
Technologies: Python, PostgreSQL, Flask, FastAPI, RabbitMQ, Kubernetes, React, Node.js, REST

Engineering Lead

2022 - 2023
Mattermost
  • Led a platform (web/desktop) team and created systems to gather customers' and internal stakeholders' requirements in a structured way, focusing on the highest impact work at any given point.
  • Oversaw the professional growth of all team members. Led several engineers to promotion through personal goal setting and coaching in a short period.
  • Migrated our codebase from JavaScript to TypeScript.
Technologies: Go, PostgreSQL, React, REST

Tech Lead

2019 - 2020
AskBeat
  • Co-founded and tech-led AskBea, a Shopify partner that builds apps to help store owners grow their sales and better manage their stores.
  • Handled the first Shopify app, a post-purchase and abandoned cart NPS survey scheduling and reporting software.
  • Used machine learning to build the recommendation algorithm for the second app, a product recommendation engine.
Technologies: Prometheus, React, Ruby on Rails (RoR), REST, FastAPI

Senior Engineer and Tech Lead

2017 - 2019
Glispa
  • Worked on retargeting dynamic audience segmentation and personalized ads using Java, Scala, Vert.x, Kafka, Aerospike, and big data for analytics and reporting.
  • Built APIs that power UIs for reporting and campaign management purposes using Node.js and GraphQL.
  • Deployed and scheduled web applications using Docker, Nomad, Consul, and Kubernetes.
Technologies: GraphQL, Node.js, Kubernetes, Druid.io, Apache Kafka, Vert.x, Java, React, Python, Flask, REST

Tech Lead

2016 - 2017
Plannaro.com
  • Co-founded and led technical projects. Used technologies including Ruby on Rails for the back-end APIs, React for the front end, PostgreSQL, Redis, and Roda for the landing pages and marketing website.
  • Integrated multiple external services for email, SMS, and geolocation (e.g., Twilio, Nexmo, Sendgrid, Mailgun).
  • Conducted user interviews with potential customers to get feedback and fine-tune the product's features.
Technologies: PostgreSQL, React, Ruby on Rails (RoR), REST

Senior Software Engineer

2015 - 2016
AnyRoad
  • Worked with a team of six developers to build the booking experience's dashboard and front pages (tour guides and more).
  • Built a single-page application with React and Ruby on Rails on the back end.
  • Handled both the back and front ends, acquiring React experience for the first time.
Technologies: PostgreSQL, React, Ruby on Rails (RoR), REST

Web Developer and Team Lead

2013 - 2015
Freelance
  • Contracted for a Swiss online learning platform for salespeople. Developed the platform in Python with the Pyramid framework.
  • Developed for a social wifi startup. Built several aspects of the application that are visible to visitors and a control panel for the clients (Wi-Fi network owners).
  • Led a team at a sports betting company. Technologies used were Python, Node.js, AngularJS, MongoDB, and Redis. Used big data from the sports betting industry for statistical analyses and other purposes. Managed a distributed team of six developers.
Technologies: Pytest, Python, Ruby on Rails (RoR)

Experience

Online Market Research Project

Currently, the website has suspended its functions. This website was online for three years (beginning 2011 till the end of 2013) for an online market research firm, but it has currently suspended its functions. It had a panel to recruit online members (around 4,000 members). I created this as a startup venture and developed both the front and back end (admin interface and user interface). I also handled marketing efforts (SEO and SEM). The web application was developed with PHP and CodeIgniter, and the data was stored using MySQL.

Online Polls Website

This project enables the creation of web polls and subsequent embedding of them on a website. It is also capable of obtaining the URL/link/QR code of the poll to share it and get responses. The project was developed with PHP and the Kohana framework and uses MySQL to store data.

Eduno

http://my.eduno.com
Eduno.com is an online learning platform for salespeople based in Switzerland. It allows companies and individuals to educate themselves in sales-related subjects with online videos and interactive quizzes. It also has a recommendation engine for marketing purposes. I'm working on the development team of this ongoing project with six remote individual contractors. Development is in Python with the Pyramid framework. For storage, we used the ZODB NoSQL database.

Collection Feature for Freelancer Platform

I developed the collections feature for an online platform for freelance developers, displaying curated collections of freelancer services. It includes an administrative interface where services are grouped into collections. Freelancers can request to be included in one or more collections.

Quovoo Quotes API

A famous quotes API available through the RapidAPI marketplace. Technologies used are Fastify (Node.js) for the back end with a PostgreSQL database, as well as Prometheus and Grafana for observability purposes.

AskBeat Shopify App

AskBeat Easy Email NPS Surveys is a Shopify app for sending NPS surveys to store customers. The surveys are sent via email either manually (uploading a list of customers) or automatically every time an order is placed (integrating with Shopify's API). Technologies used include Ruby on Rails, Vue.js, and Bulma.

Vegetarian Keto Recipes Android App (Recipeno)

A native Android mobile app for vegetarian keto recipes. The app was built with Java (native app), and the API for fetching and updating data was built with Ruby on Rails and a PostgreSQL database on the back end.

Theatrinos.gr

Theatrinos.gr is a local theater performance search engine. Visitors can easily search among theaters and performances, using multiple criteria (e.g., genre, day of the week), to find performances that interest them.

Technologies used: Ruby on rails 5, jQuery and vanilla JavaScript, SQLite 3, Sass, and Webpack for asset bundling.

Integrations were made with Mailgun's API and with various affiliate APIs.

Education

2003 - 2003

Master’s Degree (Exchange Program) in Business Administration (MBA)

Rotterdam School of Management - Rotterdam, Netherlands

2001 - 2003

Master's Degree in Business Administration (MBA)

Athens University of Economics and Business - Athens, Greece

1997 - 2001

Bachelor of Science Degree in Physics

University of Crete - Heraklion, Greece

Certifications

JUNE 2022 - JUNE 2025

Certified Kubernetes Application Developer

Linux Foundation

Skills

Libraries/APIs

React, Node.js, Ruby on Rails API

Tools

Pytest, RabbitMQ

Languages

Python, Java, GraphQL, JavaScript, Go, PHP, Ruby, Java 8

Frameworks

Ruby on Rails (RoR), Flask, Vert.x, Fastify, Android SDK

Storage

PostgreSQL, MySQL, Druid.io, SQLite

Paradigms

REST

Platforms

Apache Kafka, Kubernetes

Other

Physics, FastAPI, Prometheus

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