Michal Vanko

Personal Information

I was born in Košice, Slovakia and I still live here. I like to drink tea and cook my own recipes.

Hobbies

I enjoy playing basketball with my friends. I also like to play other team sports like football and hockey. I also play squash and table tennis. Once I've won a competition in squash at my university. During summer, I love to go water skiing or swimming in a nearby lake.

I am very passionate about music. I've also tried to use some digital workstations to compose my own music.

I enjoy playing board games with my friends and family.

Interests

I like to explore new technologies and Open-source software. I am interested in modern software architecture and reactive programming. I've attended several tech conferences and hackathons, where I can meet interesting people and explore fascinating ideas.

I've given presentations on various topics related to web development. You can take a look at some of them here.

I enjoy teaching and explaining how technologies and techniques work to my colleagues or students for their better understanding.
I take advantage of test-driven development.

Skills

Slovak is my mother tongue and I've learned English as my second language. I speak English on an advanced level.

I'm an experienced Linux Desktop user. I prefer to use open-source libraries and technologies while I develop solutions.

I'm in good command of Office Tools and I have experience with image manipulation programs like GIMP and Inkscape.
I can also compose music and sounds on digital audio workstation.

I'm passionate about software architecture. My goal is not only to be able to design a suitable solution for any kind of product but also to be able to architect the processes behind building a team. From small presentation sites, IOT devices, to large enterprise applications running on cloud.

I practice public speaking and I am not afraid to share my knowledge and passion about technology.

I'm an advanced user of source code management tools git and svn.

I've got a driving license for category B 🚗.

Work experience

• sudolabs s.r.o.

  sudolabs is a company focused on building products and software solutions for start-ups & other clients. The company has its own product lab focused on product research and product discovery and an engineering lab focused on the development of high-quality software solutions. At sudolabs, I've managed to proceed from senior software engineer to tech lead and an Engineering manager. I am part of one of the most successful projects at sudolabs, The Expert. I am responsible for the architecture and quality of the proposed feature solutions and for the development processes used. As an Engineering manager, I try to represent people in my team and help them achieve the best of their potential.

  I've started to work for sudolabs in October 2019.

• localhost.company s.r.o.

  localhost.company was a small company that had around 40 developers while most of them were students. I worked in localhost as a Senior front end developer. I was focused on delivering a high-quality product and to teach and helping other colleagues grow in expertise.

  I've started to work there in October 2018 and left after a year.

• Ness KE s.r.o.

  I worked in Ness as a Senior front-end developer. In Ness, I've been able to work for different clients on various projects.

  I joined Ness as a Junior front-end developer and I've been able to quickly proceed to Senior level with my engagement.

  I started to work in March 2013 and left in October 2018.

• eSOLUTIONS s.r.o.

  I worked in eSOLUTIONS as a web developer part-time while I was studying in high school and at University.

  I was building front-end and back-end services for websites and web applications. Mostly using PHP, MySQL, JavaScript, HTML, CSS.

  I started to work in 2007 and stopped in 2012.

Projects

• The Expert

  

  The Expert is a digital platform that connects clients to interior designers around the world. For experts, it allows managing their portfolio and profile and schedule in which they are open for consultations. Clients are able to view their profiles and book consultations. The project is expanding with an e-commerce platform that should enable these experts to recommend and sell high-value goods.

  We have built this platform from scratch as the only technical team. We also managed to design the product itself in-house. I am part of the engineering team. I work as an Engineering manager. I am also responsible for the technical architecture and development processes that are being used to deliver new features.

  The Expert has been featured in numerous worldwide media such as The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Forbes, TechCrunch, and many more.

• Panoramic

  Panoramic is a company focused on building a web application for data scientists to be able to create and share models and graphs in between each other. I've been working as a team lead of a small team that was focused on building a rich-text collaboration feature into the web application. The application was built on top of modern web technologies such as React, node.js with GraphQL, and TypeScript. We have successfully built this feature by integrating Mattermost into the existing back-end. After that, we have been helping another team by enhancing existing features for importing data sources.

• Manualogic

  Manualogic is a single-page application for product manual creators. It contains custom web editor and management system of translatable pages, books and products. Its main goal is to enable customers to get manuals of their products in digital form.

  It's built on top of modern web technologies such as Angular, RxJS, and the content is synchronized through Websockets. The back-end part is built on top of Spring framework.

  The team consisted of 3-4 front-end developers, 2-3 back-end developers, and 2 testers.

• responzIO

  

  responzIO is smart, easy to use monitoring and automation system. The ultimate tool for various applications such as hydroponics, aquariums and gardens.

  I worked on responzIO as architect and full-stack developer. I've designed complete software solution for an already created platform and a series of sensors, sockets and other hardware. Designed solution consist of varios parts: Deployment, Microservices, Stateful core back-end application, progressive web application, auto-update over web...

  This project is built with modern web technologies including: CycleJS, Reactive Streams, D3, Jest, Webpack.

• Signal Hub Manager

  Signal Hub is an end-to-end Big Data analytics platform for large enterprises. It accelerates the process of extracting insights and intelligence from large volumes of data, including data of different types and in different formats.

  I worked on Signal Hub as a front-end developer. Working on the part of the platform called Workbench. Workbench is an IDE for data analyst. It allows to create and tweak various models and transformations which are then deployed to other parts of the platform. Users are able to create workflows and see the results of his work with pleasant visuals.

  This project is built with modern web technologies including: AngularJS, React, D3, Highcharts, Jest, Webpack.

  I was part of a large distributed team of ~20 developers & ~6 testers which were working on the whole platform.

• SHIP (Structured heard input process)

  SHIP is a web application for editors who actively track trades offers and bids on the commodity market.

  It was built for a price reporting company S&P Global Platts. This company is a provider of energy and commodities information and a source of benchmark price assessments in the physical energy markets.

  SHIP was suited for a very easy and quick workflow for editors.

  Team consisted of 3 front-end and 3 back-end developers. I was a leader of the front-end part of the project.

  The application was built with AngularJS and Redux. The challenging part was working with Cassandra database.

• FX Salestrader

  www.caplin.com/business/fx-sales.com

  The main function of Caplin FX Sales is to allow sales users to trade on behalf of their clients. This needs to be an efficient workflow providing all the relevant information to the sales user.

  Main technologies used: Websockets, Custom Front-end JavaScript MVVM Framework (based on Knockout, BRJS)

  We worked on this project in a team of 6 developers and 3 testers

• Livesport.tv

  www.livesport.tv

  Livesport.tv is a network of premium online sports channels, featuring all the top sports competitions from around the world.

  I worked on this project as a front-end developer. I maintained all livesport channels and I worked on new features and enhancements of websites.

  Project was built on top of Freemarker templating language.

  The team consisted of 2 developers and 1 tester.

• beIN SPORTS France & beIN SPORTS USA

  beIN Sports is a global network of sports channels jointly owned and operated by Qatari Sports Investments, an affiliate of Al Jazeera Media Networks

  I worked on this project as a front-end developer. I maintained official websites of beIN SPORTS France and USA (www.beinsports.fr, www.beinsports.tv).

  Project was built on top of Freemarker templating language.

  I worked on this project in a team consisting of 7 members.

• Košice Peace Marathon

  www.kosicemarathon.com

  Košice Peace Marathon is the oldest marathon in Europe and the third-oldest in the world.

  I worked on this project as a front-end and an back-end developer. I've built a custom CMS for website and for registration of participants. Also created an application for actual event for signing participants.
  The application was able to create a start list of all participants and provide various statistics about them.

  I've built this project alone and then one maintainer joined me.

Presentations

• Unstoppable growth of front-end frameworks

  A simple summary of the web front-end evolution, which will try to describe how and why tools improve & why there is still something to explore.

  Open preview

• WebAssembly

  A presentation about what WebAssembly is about and how it might affect the future of the world.

  Open preview

• Spreading the web

  A presentation about the rising number of use cases for utilizing web technologies outside of the web platform such as native mobile applications and robotics.

  Open preview

• Docker

  An introduction to Docker containerization technology and how it differs from virtualization.

  Open preview

Education

• Technická univerzita Košice

  Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Informatics - Intelligent Systems

  Artificial Intelligence, Neural Networks, Fuzzy Systems

  Dates: 1. 9. 2010 - 20. 6. 2013

  Title of qualification awarded: Bachelor (Bc.)

• Secondary school of Electrical Engineering in Košice

  SPŠ Elektrotechnická, Komenského 22, Košice

  Electrotechnics, Telecommunication

  Dates: 1. 9. 2005 - 1. 7. 2010

  Title of qualification awarded: Full secondary school education with leaving examination