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Tim Lewis

Backend Developer.

Based in Berlin.

About Me

Hi, I'm Tim Lewis, a South African born Backend Engineer living in the vibrant city of Berlin, Germany. I enjoy learning new things every day. I like to counteract sitting at the keyboard with some hiking and exploring new parts of the city and its surroundings.

  • Name: Timothy Lewis
  • Profession: Ruby / Ruby on Rails Backend Developer
  • Residence: Berlin
  • E-mail: [email protected]
Experience
Jul 2019 - Present
Ruby Backend Developer - Vaha / etone Motion Analysis GmbH - www.vaha.com

Joined as one of the first backend developers for Vaha Sports Mirror. Greenfield project where we started Vaha from scratch and had to build everything from full backend API for all the Vaha mirrors to a full subscription and billing system, using Rails / Grape / Sidekiq / PostgreSQL. Vaha was eventually acquired in 2022 by Bioniq and we used Vaha's backend as a base for a integrated backend for both companies.
Some of the Projects and Tasks I undertook while working at Vaha were:

  • Planned and implemented a complete Billing, Payment and Subscription System with api connections to Shopify and Chargebee.
  • Implemented and maintained full messaging stack to contact customers including email, sms, push using Sendgrid, Onesignal and Twilio.
  • Implemented and maintained a Backoffice Admin Dashboard using Active Admin.
  • Integrated a new companies workflow and full backend infrastructure into Vaha's backend, including subscription and billing using Stripe, Chargebee and Shopify.

    • Jul 2017 - Jul 2019
    Ruby Backend Developer - Pixformance Sports - www.pixformance.com

    In July 2017 I switched roles from a Network Admin to a fulltime Backend Developer at Pixformance Sports. My duties as backend developer included:

  • Planned and implemented a Rails 4 to Rails 5 upgrade on a relatively large and complex codebase.
  • Designing, implementing and maintaining the Rails based RESTful API.
  • Designing and implementing new features for this API which serves Pixformance's various front end clients.

    • Feb 2014 - Jul 2017
    Windows/Linux Server Administration / Devops-Backend-Infrastructure - Pixformance Sports - www.pixformance.com

  • Migrated a large scale centralized geographically separate Active Directory Domain (1000 computers) to a decentralized fault tolerant fleet being managed exclusively by Puppet.
  • Administered and maintained Linux Servers to manage this puppet site.
  • Contributed to and helped to maintain a Ruby on Rails Backend System to communicate with these machines.

    • mid 2002 - 2013
    Windows Server Administration / Network Administrator - International School of Duesseldorf

  • Responsible for a large network of 800 computers divided into 2 Active Directory Domains.
  • Responsible for the maintenance and support of 8 Servers including 2 Domain Controllers and a SQl Server.

    • 2001 - mid 2002
    Web Designer/ Network Admin(Linux) / Lecturer (Javascript) - Solms Training and Consulting

  • Responsible for designing and maintaining the colleges website.
  • Responsible for maintaining the network of lab computers running linux.
  • Taught a course on Javascript.

    • Education
    2010 - 2015
    UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH AFRICA: Bsc Comp Sci Distance Learning : Pretoria, South Africa

    I graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science/Information Systems.

    2001 - mid 2001
    SOLMS TRAINING AND CONSULTING cc, Emmarentia, South Africa

    I passed the Exams and obtained the competency certificates for the following courses:

  • Programming in Java
  • Advanced Java
  • Enterprise Java Beans
  • Object Orientated Analysis and Design using UML
  • Distributed Systems via CORBA

    • 2000 - 2001
    THE ZONE COMPUTER CAREER CAMPUS, Rivonia, South Africa

  • A+ and N+ Courses (No exams written)
  • MCP Windows 2000 (Microsoft Certified Professional)
  • MCSE Windows 2000(Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer)

    • Spoken Language Skills
    • English - Native
      100%

    • German - Spoken very good, written B1 level
      70%
    Technical Skills / Knowledge
    Ruby

  • 7 years of professional ruby usage.
  • Used both Ruby 2 and 3 extensively in production systems.
  • I subscribe to many ruby newsletters including Ruby Weekly, Awesome Ruby and my favorite newsletter Short Ruby news to keep up to date on current ruby news and learn new things.
  • A Fan of Avdi Grimm, subscriber to Ruby Tapas, now Graceful.dev and have read many parts of Avdis books.
  • Enjoyed 99 bootle of OOP and Practical Object Oriented Design by Sandi Metz.
  • Watched many Youtube and paid videos including Railsconf and Ben Orenstein.

    • Ruby on Rails

  • 7 years of professional Ruby on Rails usage.
  • Upgraded Rails from version 4 to 5 on a big production system and later 5 to 6 on another system.
  • Extensive usage of different Rails API frameworks and gems, standard Rails API with Active Model Serializers and Grape with the full Grape Serialization and API Framework including Grape Entities etc.
  • Used the full gamut of Rails code organization and best practices of the Time, from Service Objects to Interactor Pattern.

    • Heroku / AWS Deployment and Server skills

  • Deployed extensively using Heroku PAAS and used all aspects of Heroku from CI, to various pulgins and of course the included Postgres and Redis services.
  • Experience with AWS with regards to S3 and and Elastic Encoder.