Prem Buczkowski, Developer in London, United Kingdom
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Prem Buczkowski

Verified Expert  in Engineering

Software Developer

Location
London, United Kingdom
Toptal Member Since
May 27, 2022

Having worked for five years as a Python and Django software engineer, Prem developed a sensibility for the best practices for keeping the software maintainable. In his opinion, that is the most important thing for a freelancer. He combined this expertise with working as a researcher at a university, unifying the newest research with usable software, which is precisely the kind of project he's most excited about.

Portfolio

Virgin Media O2
Python, JavaScript, Apache Airflow, FastAPI, WebSockets, Google Cloud, BigQuery...
Anjuna Security
Architecture, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Python, C++, Go, C#, Java, Amazon EC2...
CirrusHQ
AWS Lambda, Amazon DynamoDB, Terraform, Python, Python 3, ETL, Amazon RDS, APIs...

Experience

Availability

Part-time

Preferred Environment

Linux, PyCharm, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Python, Django, SQL

The most amazing...

...thing I've developed is an implementation of an optimization algorithm. It was published as a paper and is written using best commercial practices.

Work Experience

GCP Python Data Engineer

2023 - 2023
Virgin Media O2
  • Worked on a data migration from the IBM Netezza database to Google BigQuery.
  • Designed and implemented a solution to ETL data from a firewalled on-prem server into GCP Cloud Storage, using Python, JavaScript, FastAPI, WebSockets, Google Cloud Run, and other related GCP services.
  • Was involved in data archaeology, finding the data sources to make sure that the tables to be decommissioned were not used anymore.
Technologies: Python, JavaScript, Apache Airflow, FastAPI, WebSockets, Google Cloud, BigQuery, Google BigQuery, Netezza, Data Engineering, Data Science, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), ETL, Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE), Unit Testing, Testing, Back-end, Databases, SQL, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Automated Testing

Software Engineer via Toptal

2022 - 2023
Anjuna Security
  • Built a high-level, reusable test suite for deploying confidential computing enclaves to the cloud using Kubernetes.
  • Increased the confidence of our banking clients in our solution significantly by designing and implementing the continuous testing suite.
  • Prepared documentation and tips for the test suite so it could be easily used and extended.
Technologies: Architecture, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Python, C++, Go, C#, Java, Amazon EC2, Amazon S3 (AWS S3), Kubernetes, Amazon EKS, AWS Key Management Service (KMS), Bash, Linux, Intel SGX, Pytest, APIs, Unit Testing, Testing, Back-end, Databases, SQL, Automated Testing

AWS Serverless Consultant

2022 - 2022
CirrusHQ
  • Developed an authentication library for Auth0 that was compatible with the serverless environment.
  • Developed and designed a serverless back end for an exam provider using DynamoDB, Lambda, Terraform, Docker, and API Gateway.
  • Designed the back end to scale out to millions of exams and exam takers, optimizing the AWS bill to be as small as possible.
Technologies: AWS Lambda, Amazon DynamoDB, Terraform, Python, Python 3, ETL, Amazon RDS, APIs, Unit Testing, Testing, Back-end, Databases, SQL, Redis

Senior Python Developer

2021 - 2022
GGMR
  • Implemented authentication for Django with an external OpenID Connect service.
  • Migrated data from a WordPress instance to a Django database managed using PostgreSQL.
  • Developed a back end of a Django CMS using Wagtail with GraphQL endpoints.
  • Implemented a search back end using Elasticsearch so the users can query legacy and current services in the same search.
Technologies: Wagtail CMS, Django, GraphQL, WordPress, Elasticsearch, Python, PostgreSQL, Terraform, Amazon Web Services (AWS), APIs, Unit Testing, Testing, Django REST Framework, Back-end, Databases, SQL, SQLAlchemy, Flask

Research Assistant and Teaching Associate

2019 - 2022
Queen Mary University of London
  • Created an interactive web application named CySecTool using Bokeh, NumPy, PuLP, and Git to present the optimization data and graphs interactively.
  • Parallelized the algorithm, leading to significant improvements in the running time.
  • Helped develop the security and authentication module. Prepared virtual machines to be attacked and defended by the students to learn practical security, along with related exercises and exam questions.
Technologies: NumPy, Bokeh, Git, Python, Computer Security, APIs, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Data Engineering, Data Science, Unit Testing, Testing, Selenium, Back-end, Flask, Redis, Automated Testing

Lead Software Engineer

2019 - 2021
Founders4Schools
  • Reduced charity running costs considerably by planning and performing a migration from Heroku to AWS.
  • Modernized the codebase first from Python 2.6 to Python 3.6 and then to Python 3.10.
  • Performed the database normalization and optimization for the significantly increased number of users.
  • Mentored junior developers and taught them how to contribute independently.
Technologies: Terraform, Git, Angular, Docker, PostgreSQL, Heroku, Python, Elasticsearch, Amazon Web Services (AWS), APIs, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Unit Testing, Testing, Django REST Framework, Celery, Back-end, Databases, SQL

Python Freelance Developer

2017 - 2019
Chihiro Software
  • Developed an in-house library from scratch to speed up data ingestion. Thanks to that, we progressed from processing one dataset every three days when I joined to processing three sites every day when the project ended.
  • Created a Firefox and Chrome extension for storing and retrieving cookies matching credentials.
  • Administered Linux servers with over 10,000 monthly unique visitors.
Technologies: Python, Linux, Red Hat Linux, WebExtensions API, Firefox, Chrome, Chrome Extensions, Firefox Extensions, Web Scraping, Scrapy, Selenium, Scraping, APIs, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Unit Testing, Testing, Django REST Framework, Celery, Beautiful Soup, Back-end, Databases, SQL, SQLAlchemy, Redis

Scalable Bi-level Multi-objective Cybersecurity Optimization Over Probabilistic Attack Graphs

http://www.eecs.qmul.ac.uk/~pm/CySecTool/cysectool.html
My task was to create an interactive web application called CySecTool using Bokeh, NumPy, PuLP, and Git to present the optimization data and graphs interactively. Besides web development and GUI knowledge, it required knowledge in graph theory, including drawing, processing, transforming graphs, devising algorithms, and cybersecurity. I also parallelized the algorithm, leading to considerable improvements in the running time.

A case study was performed in cooperation with the National Cyber Security Centre, UK. I analyzed the security of a middle-sized industrial provider.

The project led to a publication, and I was its main author:
• https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3510547.3517919.
2018 - 2021

Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science

Queen Mary University of London - London, UK

MAY 2022 - MAY 2025

AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate

Amazon Web Services

JULY 2018 - OCTOBER 2021

Red Hat Certified System Administrator

Red Hat

Libraries/APIs

Beautiful Soup, SQLAlchemy, NumPy, WebExtensions API, Intel SGX

Tools

Amazon Elastic Container Registry (ECR), Cron, PyCharm, Amazon EBS, Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS), AWS SDK, Beanstalk, Ansible, Git, Terraform, Amazon EKS, AWS Key Management Service (KMS), Pytest, Apache Airflow, BigQuery, Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE), Celery

Frameworks

Django, Selenium, Flask, Angular, Chrome, Scrapy, Django REST Framework

Storage

Redis, Elasticsearch, PostgreSQL, MySQL, Databases, Amazon S3 (AWS S3), Amazon DynamoDB, Google Cloud, Netezza

Languages

Python, Bash, JavaScript, SQL, GraphQL, PHP, Python 3, C++, Go, C#, Java, HTML, CSS

Platforms

Linux, Docker, Red Hat Linux, AWS ALB, WordPress, Heroku, Firefox, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Amazon EC2, AWS Lambda, Kubernetes, Google Cloud Platform (GCP)

Paradigms

Unit Testing, Testing, Automated Testing, Parallel Programming, ETL, Data Science

Other

APIs, Back-end, Web Scraping, API Integration, Scraping, Computer Science, Wagtail CMS, Bokeh, Graph Theory, Computer Security, Chrome Extensions, Firefox Extensions, Serverless, Amazon RDS, Architecture, Data Engineering, FastAPI, WebSockets, Google BigQuery, Artificial Intelligence (AI)

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