hi, I am
alexander rossa.
I design and build software.
I’m a software developer with experience of working on big projects, delivering against tight deadlines and ensuring continuous operation of critical components.
I worked on all parts of the stack, from the very depths of a bare-metal hypervisor, through the complex backend of a cloud server, all the way up to the front-end and UI components.
about me
Trading the high peaks of Slovak mountains for the coastlines of the British Isles, I spent the past few years of my life in the UK, studying and working in IT.
I have dabbled with AI and machine learning, both on my own and during my internships. Professionally, I have worked on virtualisation platform at Zynstra, building complex services and leading a team of developers.
In my free time I can most often be found playing Dota 2, trying to compensate my sedentary lifestyle with trips to nature or reading whatever book catches my attention.
skills
- used it for everything from small helper scripts to writing big pieces of software
- mastered object oriented programming in Python, making use of inheritance, polymorphism, redefining magic methods and more
- good knowledge of essential things like spawning subprocesses, multithreading, sockets..
- written numerous bots to integrate with tools such as GitLab and improve company processes using their REST APIs
- wrote hundreds of unit tests for complex pieces of software requiring advanced mocking and assertions
- familiar with using Python for AI / machine learning – especially with Keras & TensorFlow
- experience with using JavaScript for both back-end and front-end
- written Node.js based apps such as an AI-powered Twitter bot during my Google Summer of Code internship
- worked on full stack projects combining React front end and Node.js backend (with Express)
- created npm package ‘seedtext’ for procedural content generation
- created numerous WordPress websites and e-shops in my free time, such as the one for Diera do Sveta – a non-profit cultural centre
- familiar with using Docker as part of the build process for ad-hoc builds of Debian packages
- experience with Kubernetes and containerization as a virtualisation alternative
- worked with Linux systems for most of my professional career, mostly Debian-based distributions
- proficient building, running and maintaining Ubuntu-based servers with Xen as their hypervisor
- knowledge of systemd, working with iptables, managing processes, analysing networks and interfaces..
experience
- managing a team of several developers for 2+ years
- filling the scrum master role for the team, overseeing sprints and taking care of the backlog
- experience with hiring and induction processes
- guiding the team members on the road of continuous development – goal setting, training, knowledge transfers..
- experience with designing and integrating new features into existing products
- liaising with stakeholders and working with other departments on detailed specifications
- providing architectural oversight to other developers
- improving processes in the company – such as removing knowledge silos by proposing and overseeing the adoption of tools like Stack Overflow for Teams
- wrote code for all parts of the stack – hypervisor source code, systemd services, object-oriented Python daemons, automated testing workflows, API-powered bots..
- experience with complicated build and deployment pipelines involing Docker and tools like Jenkins for CI
- refactored numerous existing services to increase performance, help with future extensibility or to allow them to scale