Tomas is available for hire

Tomas Novella

Verified Expert in Engineering

Software Engineer and Developer

Prague, Czech Republic

Toptal member since March 30, 2022

Expertise

JavaScript TypeScript Node.js Git React.js Redux Express.js PostgreSQL Jira Java Kotlin Swift SQL Objective-C Artificial Intelligence

Bio

Tomas is a software engineer and developer with a decade of experience performing different roles with high-level responsibilities. He started as a software engineer designing a web scraping domain-specific language used on millions of machines and overseeing small teams as a team lead. Most recently, Tomas became a technical project and product manager, spearheading company-wide internal projects and larger client projects of international scope.

Portfolio

Circles

Back-end Development, Databases, Back-end Architecture, Communication, Node.js...

Salsita Software

Shape Up, Feature Prioritization, DevOps, Data Modeling, Git, IT Management

Salsita Software

TypeScript, Express.js, JavaScript, Git, SQL, GitHub, OpenAPI, Kotlin, Redux...

Experience

HTML - 7 years
Git - 6 years
JavaScript - 6 years
TypeScript - 4 years
React - 3 years
Node.js - 3 years
Express.js - 3 years
Redux - 3 years

Availability

Part-time

Preferred Environment

MacOS, Visual Studio Code (VS Code)

The most amazing...

...project I've worked on is Circles, where I developed a system for feedback collection, which is regularly used by over 60% of the user base

Work Experience

Senior Full-stack Developer

2022 - PRESENT

Circles

Developed a system for feedback collection, which is regularly used by over 60% of the user base.
Boosted the team's efficiency by analyzing the technical debt and participating in its elimination (database restructuring, improving QA for testing environments, setting up strict mode for TypeScript).
Added TypeScript types to key components (database layer methods, singleton factories), significantly improving the type information in the codebase.
Improved technical knowledge sharing and learning by creating and curating a Slack channel dedicated to this purpose.
Revamped meeting format to be more engaging and efficient, thus revealing the team's pain points in retrospectives and technical debt meetings.

Technologies: Back-end Development, Databases, Back-end Architecture, Communication, Node.js, React, SQL, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Leadership, HubSpot, React Native, iOS, Android, Redis, NGINX, Docker, Docker Compose

Technical Project and Product Manager

2021 - 2022

Salsita Software

Managed small projects with a budget of <$100,000. Led teams of up to five elements, including full-stack engineers and UI and QA specialists. Articulated with the teams to communicate client requirements.
Prioritized customer requests based on the expected business value and estimated the scope of the tasks.
Handled data modeling, DevOps, and provisioning while working with UI-only teams.
Took part in and facilitated design sprints and other design workshops.
Acted as the product owner of internal products, such as the performance review application.

Technologies: Shape Up, Feature Prioritization, DevOps, Data Modeling, Git, IT Management

Lead Full-stack Engineer

2015 - 2021

Salsita Software

Led small teams of developers in programming and pair programming.
Tailored the interview process and interviewed about 30 people, more than half of the company's full-stack engineers.
Developed key projects' features and partook in architectural decisions.
Gave speeches at some events and meetups in Prague.
Onboarded new employees and trained them in the projects' stack.

Technologies: TypeScript, Express.js, JavaScript, Git, SQL, GitHub, OpenAPI, Kotlin, Redux, APIs, PostgreSQL, React, React Native, MySQL, Code Review, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Bootstrap

Full-stack Developer

2015 - 2016

Salsita Software

Worked on several client projects, both as part of a developers team or as a standalone developer on smaller projects.
Took part in the development process, fixed bugs, and performed maintenance work.
Refactored major codebases, getting familiar with and applying Clean Code principles.

Technologies: JavaScript

Co-founder and Full-stack Developer

2009 - 2012

Self-employed

Partnered with one designer to design and write a CMS, acting as a lightweight alternative to WordPress.
Sold several websites for different sectors and purposes, including www.ydea.s, which is still functional today.
Handled all the back-end work and client support.

Technologies: HTML, htaccess, MySQL, SQL, JavaScript, Apache, jQuery

Experience

Business Intelligence App for a Fortune 500 Company

The business intelligence app is a suite of products used directly by the CEO and CFO with the business analysts. The idea was to turn vast piles of collected data into actionable information nuggets made accessible to the company's top management via a web app and native mobile app. It included a back-end microservice infrastructure and a web, React native, and iOS native front end. I created an endpoint to query for complex tables of data. I also led the development of the React app and contributed to the iOS one, helping outline features to port from the web app to mobile.

AdblockBrowser for iOS

https://adblockbrowser.org/

AdblockBrowser is a browser that emulates the Chrome extension API and enables running native Chrome extensions. It was built in our previous in-house browser—Kitt. As my first iOS app, I was mostly helping with migration to a then-new Swift language.

Serrano Web Extractor

https://github.com/salsita/serrano

Serrano is a domain-specific language for easy data extraction from the web. It was focused on superior safety and extensibility and was used by several companies on millions of computers. I designed and created the web extractor and published a scientific report about it at Springer.

Paperless Litigation App

The Paperless Litigation app aims to completely replace paper in courtrooms. Its main features include loading court cases in PDF format, PDF editing, custom PDF markup, and presentation mode, in which the presenter selects the specific page to be presented publicly. I've contributed to this project as a full-stack developer, also mentoring a junior colleague who was working on it with me. I also wrote the React Native modules for iOS in Objective-C and reviewed Android modules in Kotlin.

Education

2010 - 2016

Master's Degree in Computer Science—Artificial Intelligence

Charles University - Prague

2014 - 2015

Master's Degree (Exchange Program) in Applied Informatics

Georg August University of Göttingen - Göttingen

Skills

Libraries/APIs

Node.js, React, MobX, OpenAPI, AWS Amplify, jQuery

Tools

Git, Jira, Lerna, GitHub, Shell, Docker Compose, Apache, NGINX

Languages

TypeScript, JavaScript, Swift, SQL, Objective-C, Java, Kotlin, HTML

Frameworks

Redux, Express.js, React Native, Cocoa Touch, Jest, Bootstrap, Android SDK, Material UI

Storage

PostgreSQL, MySQL, Databases, Redis

Paradigms

Microservices, DevOps, REST, Clean Code, Functional Programming, Back-end Architecture

Platforms

MacOS, Visual Studio Code (VS Code), Heroku, Android, Docker, Amazon Web Services (AWS), HubSpot, iOS

Other

IT Management, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Computer Security, Web Security, German, Shape Up, Feature Prioritization, Data Modeling, ESLint, htaccess, Web Scraping, APIs, Code Review, Back-end Development, Communication, Leadership

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