Radek Ostrowski

Edinburgh, United Kingdom

Member since July 25, 2014

Radek is a talented big data engineer able to hit the ground running. He is highly effective in taking applications from inception to completion and improving existing solutions. He is particularly interested in Apache Spark (Certified Developer), Apache Cassandra, Docker, and Scala. He is also a double winner of IBM Sparkathon: http://devpost.com/software/my-perfect-weather

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Portfolio

Taulia, Inc. (via Toptal)
Spark, Scala, Kafka, Cassandra, Docker, Kubernetes, AWS, Redshift
Method Mill
Spark, Scala, Akka, Docker, AWS (mainly S3, Redshift, and Redis), MySQL
Max2, Inc. (via Toptal)
Spark, Scala, Kafka, Akka, Mesos

Experience

Java, 11 years
Scala, 3 years
Play Framework, 2 years
Spark, 2 years
Docker, 2 years
VoltDB, 3 years
Cassandra, 2 years
MongoDB, 2 years

Availability

Part-time

Preferred Environment

Unix, Mac OS, GitHub

The most amazing...

...system I've co-built is Sony's PS4 account system, which is highly scalable and able to handle hundreds of thousands of transactions per second.

Employment

Big Data Engineer
Taulia, Inc. (via Toptal)
2016 - PRESENT
- Designed and built a new generation of Taulia’s data analytics platform.
- Effectively processed financial data and extracted useful information both in batch and real time.
- Built the platform in Scala, Spark Streaming and SQL, Cassandra, Kafka, Docker, and Redshift, running on Kubernetes on AWS.
Technologies: Spark, Scala, Kafka, Cassandra, Docker, Kubernetes, AWS, Redshift
Big Data Engineer
Method Mill
2015 - 2016
- Helped to integrate various data sources at a large scale.
- Built a pipeline from MySQL to Amazon Redshift.
- Created a syncing tool for Amazon S3.
Technologies: Spark, Scala, Akka, Docker, AWS (mainly S3, Redshift, and Redis), MySQL
Big Data Engineer
Max2, Inc. (via Toptal)
2015 - 2015
- Helped to design and build a community powered venue discovery platform offering personalized recommendations, planning with friends, and curated and real-time information.
- Used SparkSQL with DataFrames for data ingestion and Spark Streaming and MLlib for analytics.
- Coded in Scala with Akka and Kafka and run on Mesos.
Technologies: Spark, Scala, Kafka, Akka, Mesos
Senior Developer/Docker Evangelist
Tesco Bank
2015 - 2015
- Introduced Docker to the development environment.
- Helped improve the CI pipeline.
- Extended the credit cards portal.
- Improved the user journey experience for loans portal.
Technologies: Java, Spring Framework, Cucumber JVM, Git, Docker
Big Data Engineer
Expedia, Inc.
2015 - 2015
- Helped to automate the build and run process.
- Prototyped with Apache Spark.
- Updated existing Hive and MapReduce workflows.
Technologies: Hadoop Ecosystem, Apache Spark, Git, Chef, Azkaban, Jenkins
Senior Software Developer/Team Leader
Sony
2013 - 2015
- Built a production RESTful Java web service for Sony devices and platforms mainly for Sony PS4 and 4K-TV handling hundreds of thousands of transactions.
- Developed on top of Spring Framework and Cassandra.
- Offered authentication and authorization capabilities based on OAuth2.
- Focused on quality of the code by employing unit testing with 100% code coverage, BDD with Cucumber, code reviews with GitHub pull requests, and Jenkins.
- Produced a project collecting, analyzing, and visualizing statistics from Sony devices. The data is stored in Amazon S3 and processed using Hadoop (MapReduce and Hive). The data collection server and the BI portals are Java based (Spring MVC and REST). I secured the access to the web services (by extending Spring Security) and the relational databases. Other technologies used include Apache Karaf (OSGi) and Maven.
- Worked on the “One Account – All Sony” global unified accounts integration project for Playstation and other devices.
- Led a team of three in Brussels and collaborated closely with the rest of the team in San Diego.
Technologies: Java, Scala, Spring Framework, REST, Cucumber, OAuth 2.0, Hadoop, Hive, Amazon EC2 and S3, Jenkins, GitHub, Splunk
Senior Developer
DeltaDNA (GamesAnalytics)
2012 - 2012
- Tackled the challenges of real-time data collection, predictive analytics, data measurement, and user engagement for the millions of online and mobile computer game sessions, personalizing the user’s gaming experience and increasing retention and revenue as a result through optimized game design and individually targeted in-game messaging.
- Designed, developed, and provided continuous updates and enhancements of new features as part of an Agile in-house development team for the platforms and mobile SDKs.
Technologies: Java, Spring Framework, REST, VoltDB, Hadoop, Hive, Android, iOS, AWS
Applications Consultant
EPCC (University of Edinburgh)
2006 - 2012
- Led “Work Package 3: Test, Delivery, and Support” from start to finish in a data-intensive research project for the EU which was rated Excellent.
- Designed and implemented the test platform, new software components based on Java, REST, Spring, Hibernate, and HDFS and extended existing software components such as OGSA-DAI during the lifespan of the project.
- Worked on a Master of Science in High Performance Computing, “test infecting” the students by lecturing and leading tutorials on unit testing and extreme programming and Agile methods; also created and gave a lecture on cloud use cases.
- Developed a RESTful presentation layer based on Jersey for the software program OGSA-DAI.
- Designed and developed an iPhone application for the UK National Supercomputing Service.
- Fixed performance problems involving CUDA, C, JNI, and Java code and improved its graphical user interface via a spinout company.
- Contributed to the project investigating the usage of Hadoop/MapReduce and clouds (Amazon EC2/Eucalyptus) for the analysis of post-genomic data.
- Enabled the integration of the UKQCD community with the International Lattice Data Grid by implementing a web service layer in Java.
Technologies: Java, REST, Spring, Hadoop, AWS

Experience

My Perfect Weather (Development)
http://myperfectweather.eu
I designed and built the web service that became a winner of the Grand Prize and the Fan Favourite award in the IBM Sparkathon. Look at the project page for more details: http://devpost.com/software/my-perfect-weather.
Scala for Data Science (Development)
http://www.amazon.com/Scala-Data-Science-Pascal-Bugnion/dp/1785281372
I was a technical reviewer for the book.
Contributions to Spark Notebook (Development)
https://github.com/andypetrella/spark-notebook/pull/191
Created a demonstration of anomaly detection in Spark using Spark SQL, Spark Streaming, and MLlib.
Contributions to Stubby4j (Development)
https://github.com/azagniotov/stubby4j/pull/50
Added functionality to serve files from the filesystem path based on the RegEx expression specified in the request.
Contributions to the Spring Security OAuth (Development)
https://github.com/spring-projects/spring-security-oauth/commits?author=radek1st
Extended the expression methods to allow testing for existing scope by specifying a RegEx expression.
How I Used Apache Spark and Docker in a Hackathon to Build a Weather App (Publication)
https://www.toptal.com/spark/apache-spark-docker-hackathon-weather-app
Hackathons often inspire engineers to create amazing software. By blending various technologies together, really useful and often fun projects can be realized in a short period of time. In this article, Toptal engineer Radek Ostrowski shares his experience participating in the IBM Sparkathon, and walks us through how he elegantly combined the power of Apache Spark and Docker in IBM Bluemix to build a weather app.
Getting Started with Docker: Simplifying Devops (Publication)
https://www.toptal.com/devops/getting-started-with-docker-simplifying-devops
Docker, an open source tool, has changed the way we think about deploying applications to servers. By leveraging some amazing resource isolation features of the Linux kernel, Docker makes it possible to easily isolate server applications into containers, control resource allocation, and design simpler deployment pipelines. Moreover, Docker enables all of this without the additional overhead of full-fledged virtual machines.
Introduction to Apache Spark with Examples and Use Cases (Publication)
https://www.toptal.com/spark/introduction-to-apache-spark
In this post, Toptal engineer Radek Ostrowski introduces Apache Spark -- fast, easy-to-use, and flexible big data processing. Billed as offering "lightning fast cluster computing", the Spark technology stack incorporates a comprehensive set of capabilities, including SparkSQL, Spark Streaming, MLlib (for machine learning), and GraphX. Spark may very well be the "child prodigy of big data", rapidly gaining a dominant position in the complex world of big data processing.
Toptal Mentor
Radek is a mentor in the Toptal Global Mentor’s Program. This program is a partnership between Toptal and General Assembly to provide high quality mentorship for students from minority and low income backgrounds who are looking to begin their careers as professional software engineers. Radek shows commitment to diversity in tech by mentoring a General Assembly student every week for a year, covering everything from coding tips and tricks to advice on making it in the industry.

Skills

Languages
Java, Scala, Python
Frameworks
Spring, Jersey, Play Framework, Hadoop, Spark
Libraries/APIs
Spark Streaming
Tools
Docker, Eclipse, IntelliJ IDEA, Spark SQL, Apache Spark
Paradigms
Object-oriented Programming (OOP), Agile Software Development, Functional reactive programming, Kanban, Functional programming, Scrum
Platforms
Linux, Mac OS, Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Storage
VoltDB, Cassandra, MongoDB, NoSQL, Amazon Redshift

Education

Master of Science (with distinction) degree in High Performance Computing
University of Edinburgh - Edinburgh, UK
2005 - 2006
Bachelor of Science (with honors) degree in Computing
Edinburgh Napier University - Edinburgh, UK
2004 - 2005
Bachelor of Science degree in Physics with IT
Nicolas Copernicus University - Torun, Poland
2001 - 2004

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