Tomáš Holcman, Developer in Brno, South Moravian Region, Czech Republic
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Tomáš Holcman

Verified Expert  in Engineering

Software Developer

Location
Brno, South Moravian Region, Czech Republic
Toptal Member Since
August 25, 2020

Tomas is an experienced infrastructure engineer with a focus on cloud environments (GCP and AWS) and Kubernetes. He pioneered the migration of Kiwi.com from bare metal servers to multiple clouds and hybrid solutions. In his startup-ish time, he was doing whatever technical tasks were required (whether back end, mobile, infra, GIS, and maps). Even in his current position, he still relies heavily on the ability to learn quickly and understand anything, as the tech world is constantly evolving.

DockerAnsibleTerraformGoogle Cloud Platform (GCP)KubernetesAmazon Web Services (AWS)JenkinsPackerIstioPythonGoTypeScriptGISReactAndroid DevelopmentMultiChain

Portfolio

Tatum.io
Google Cloud Platform (GCP), OVH, Ansible, Terraform, GitLab CI/CD...
Level01 Technologies Limited
Continuous Deployment, Continuous Delivery (CD), Kubernetes...
Kiwi
Amazon Web Services (AWS), Ansible, Terraform, Istio, Kubernetes...

Experience

Ansible - 10 yearsDocker - 10 yearsTerraform - 9 yearsGitLab CI/CD - 8 yearsGoogle Cloud Platform (GCP) - 8 yearsKubernetes - 6 yearsRole-based Access Control (RBAC) - 5 yearsAmazon Web Services (AWS) - 5 years

Availability

Part-time

Preferred Environment

Amazon Web Services (AWS), Istio, Docker, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Kubernetes, GitLab CI/CD

The most amazing...

...workloads I've helped migrate and reshape were ushered from a few hand-managed bare metal servers to a cloud-native enterprise with all resources in code.

Work Experience

Infrastructure/DevOps Engineer and Cloud Architect

2021 - 2023
Tatum.io
  • Worked for a company that provides programmatic access to many blockchains. Managed much 3rd-party software, such as the blockchain nodes, sometimes of questionable quality. Did a lot of work around to achieve a reasonable quality of services.
  • Built, in early stages, fast, big, and cheap: we achieved that by a bit of non-standard use of HashiCorp stack (Nomad and Consul) on the cheap bare-metal provider.
  • Migrated critical workloads to more reliable environments such as MongoDB on Atlas, Kubernetes workloads on GCP, and other GCP-managed services.
  • Processed, stored, and indexed a vast amount of data (tens of terabytes per chain) and provided reasonably fast customer access for the data services.
Technologies: Google Cloud Platform (GCP), OVH, Ansible, Terraform, GitLab CI/CD, Google Cloud Spanner, Big Data, Blockchain, JSON-RPC, Proxies

GCP DevOps Consultant

2020 - 2021
Level01 Technologies Limited
  • Helped transform a monolith application into a set of microservices. Prepared a system for their management in multiple environments.
  • Protected the most critical assets, such as secrets and workloads. Part of the production environment was closed for developers and infrastructure/DevOps teams, so only a few were able to apply the changes we prepared.
  • Acquired substantial knowledge about blockchain, the most critical parts of infrastructure working with it, and even more advanced things like Oracle and multichain cooperation.
Technologies: Continuous Deployment, Continuous Delivery (CD), Kubernetes, Continuous Integration (CI), Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE), DevOps, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Ubuntu Server, Redis Clusters, MongoDB, RabbitMQ, Google Stackdriver, Shell, Docker, Cloud Security, Distributed Tracing, Systems Monitoring

Principal Infrastructure and Cloud Engineer

2016 - 2021
Kiwi
  • Introduced and pushed the way of managing services from Git-oriented deploys on bare metal servers via virtual machines and cloud images, Docker up to Kubernetes.
  • Pioneered and helped implement all new infrastructure technologies and challenges: migrated to AWS, Terraform, Rancher (Docker management), Kubernetes, VPC interconnect and dedicated connections, GCP, Vault, and Istio.
  • Grew with the company from a small startup to an enterprise with hundreds of developers.
Technologies: Amazon Web Services (AWS), Ansible, Terraform, Istio, Kubernetes, Google Cloud Platform (GCP)

IT Engineer

2013 - 2017
Freelance
  • Built the JavaScript core shared between multiple mobile platforms (Android, Blackberry, iOS) and built an Android app around it.
  • Created automation to generate custom map tiles, geocoding, and routing data over OpenStreetMaps. Prepared and operated those services for tens of thousands of customers.
  • Created automation around mobile build and upload to app stores.
  • Prepared automated infrastructure for multiple projects.
Technologies: Amazon Web Services (AWS), PHP, Node.js, Docker, Terraform, Ansible, GIS, Automation, Android Development

Full-stack Developer

2008 - 2014
Two Bits s.r.o.
  • Developed a few Czech content sites with a focus on fitness and traveling.
  • Created an abstraction over a pretty complex flight ticketing industry, covering 35+ airline APIs (and scrapers).
  • Developed the first version of a real-time flight ticket combinator.
Technologies: JavaScript, MySQL, PHP

Kiwi Travel Agency

https://www.kiwi.com
Kiwi.com is an online travel agency with virtual interlining technology. It was named the fastest-growing technology company in Central Europe in 2017. My primary responsibility in the company is to drive technology (infrastructure and cloud) direction, test, and evaluate new technologies. In the past, my main goal was to find, configure, and operate an easy-to-use platform and tools for developers to run their services. Kiwi started on a few hand-managed servers with a Git-oriented deployment; later, we moved through pre-built images with a configuration written in Ansible to Docker-oriented deployment with Rancher, up to containers managed by Kubernetes. We used multiple cloud providers (AWS, GCP) and bare-metal providers (Hetzner, OVH, DigitalOcean).

Tripomatic

https://travel.sygic.com/en
A web and mobile trip planner, later acquired by Sygic.com. I designed the JavaScript "core" containing business logic shared between Android, Blackberry, and the web (before React Native). Also, I created automation to build, test, and upload city-specific guides to the app stores (300+ apps). When public map tiles, geocoding, and routing services became too expensive and insufficient, we built and operated our own solutions based on OpenStreetMaps and other open-source projects.
2005 - 2009

Bachelor's Degree in Electrical Engineering

Brno University of Technology - Brno, Czech Republic

2000 - 2004

Coursework in Information Technologies

School of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology Brno - Brno, Czech Republic

Libraries/APIs

React, Node.js, JSON-RPC

Tools

Ansible, Terraform, GitLab CI/CD, Istio, Jenkins, Packer, GIS, Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE), RabbitMQ, Google Stackdriver, Shell, Vault

Platforms

Kubernetes, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Docker, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Blockchain, AWS IoT, Android

Paradigms

Role-based Access Control (RBAC), Automation, Continuous Deployment, Continuous Delivery (CD), Continuous Integration (CI), DevOps

Languages

JavaScript, Python, Go, TypeScript, PHP

Frameworks

React Native

Storage

MySQL, MongoDB, OVH, Google Cloud Spanner

Other

Android Development, Ubuntu Server, Redis Clusters, Cloud Security, Distributed Tracing, Systems Monitoring, Big Data, Proxies, OpenStreetMap

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