Resume

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Contact

I prefer contact via email: hello@gwitek.com

Alternatively you can send me a message on LinkedIn

Profile

I’ve spent 5+ years working as an engineering manager on top of 8 years as a software developer. I specialize in building successful, diverse, productive teams. I coach managers and developers, I speak at conferences, I occasionally write code. I’ve worked in multiple industries including travel, fintech and cybersecurity. My current goal is to improve the state of engineering management in the tech industry.

Experience

2021 - currently: Booking.com πŸ‡³πŸ‡±

2022+: Senior Engineering Manager

  • Manager of managers with 4 direct and 15 indirect reports
  • Took caretaker role in April 2022, promoted to permanent role in August 2022
  • Responsible for internal tools related to incident response, service lifecycle and secrets management
  • Involved in creation and adoption of career frameworks
  • Leading workshops and community meetings for engineering managers
  • Responsible for negotiating multi-million contracts with vendors
  • Hiring manager for multiple roles

2021-2022: Engineering Manager

  • Led team responsible for incident response policies, practices, and tools
  • Introduced community meetings for engineering managers
  • Led technical implementation and adoption of on-call program
  • Supported team with technical guidance

2020 - 2021: Engineering Manager at EclecticIQ πŸ‡³πŸ‡±

  • Led a team of 10+ people: developers, testers, technical writers
  • Led a backend community of practice
  • Responsible for hiring across multiple roles
  • Supported team by doing code reviews and writing code

2019 β€” 2020: Manager of Software Development at Diligent πŸ‡³πŸ‡±

  • Led 2 teams working on CGLytics product (10 people in total)
  • Overhauled team processes which reduced weekly time spent on meetings by more than 3 hours
  • Initiated major changes in the platform: upgrading software, improving scalability, introducing better tools
  • Porformed as a β€œscrum master”, responsible for maintaining backlog, organizing daily and weekly updates, etc.
  • Updated and formalized interview process for development teams

2015 - 2018: multiple roles at Ascenda πŸ‡ΈπŸ‡¬

2017β€”2018: Head of Engineering

  • Managed 3 teams of engineers with up to 16 direct reports
  • Initiated and set up the first overseas team of Engineering (in Manila, Philippines) and growing development team from 8 to 20 people
  • Overhauled team structure and processes as the company kept growing and maturing
  • Mentored developers on all stages in their careers, from interns to team leaders
  • Participated in team-wide and company-wide performance review
  • Initiated and led efforts in moving company to a remote-first culture
  • Continued to be a hands-on engineer, with working time split between programming and management activities

2015β€”2017: Lead Software Engineer

  • Helped the company to grow from 2 to 8 engineers (and to around 20 by the end of 2018)
  • Designed and led building 2 main company products: a web-based white label travel booking platform and API-based loyalty currency exchange
  • Led effort in implementing major functionalities, including a hotel search engine written in Elixir
  • Collaborated with other departments in removing bottleneck through design of internal tools
  • Led multiple team meetings, including sprint planning and retrospective
  • Introduced and organised internal workshops

2014 and prior: software developer at various companies πŸ‡ͺπŸ‡ΈπŸ‡©πŸ‡ͺπŸ‡΅πŸ‡±

  • Built multiple projects using Ruby and JavaScript
  • Worked remotely and in the office in multiple countries and across multiple timezones
  • Optimized Ruby on Rails apps to handle up to 300,000 req/min
  • Led internal and external workshops, organized community meetings and internship programs

Education

  • Poznan University of Technology - BSc in Computer Science, 2007 β€” 2011
  • Poznan University of Technology - MSc in Computer Science, 2011 β€” 2012

Technical skills

  • Back-end development with Ruby, Elixir, Scala, Python, Node.js, PHP
  • Front-end development with TypeScript, Angular, Vue.js, React.js
  • Proficiency with both SQL and NoSQL databases
  • Experience with multiple AWS services
  • Experience with heavy-traffic, scalable applications, service oriented architecture
  • Basic familiarity with machine learning, Kubernetes, Hashicorp tools

Others

  • I occasionally contribute to open source projects. I used to maintain Sorcery, a popular authentication library.
  • I spoke at several technical conferences, including EuRuKo (European Ruby Conference), WebExpo Prague, RedDotRuby in Singapore, RubyConf Taiwan as well as Codemotion Berlin.
  • I used to co-organise local meetups for Ruby Developers in Poland and Singapore, as well as meetups for Elixir and Erlang developers in Singapore.
  • I volunteered as a programming coach in Singapore, Poland and Spain.
  • I speak Polish (native), English (very fluent) and Spanish (conversational). Currently I study Dutch.