Kalman Olah

Kalman Olah

Tech Consultant, Full Stack Problem Solver

I am an experienced craftsman, problem solver and perfectionist with a passion for delivering high-quality results and finding solutions to complex challenges.

I have a proven track record in IT consultancy, where I have worked with both high-profile and minor customers spanning a variety of sectors such as shipping, law enforcement and leisure, and have demonstrated my skills as a full stack developer, sysadmin, team lead and technical architect.

In addition to my technical skills, I also have strong leadership abilities and business acumen. I am an effective problem solver and excel at playing devil's advocate as well as thinking outside the box. I know how to manage teams and projects, and have a deep understanding of the challenges and opportunities facing businesses in the tech industry.

I am a jack of all trades, with a masterful understanding of some key areas. My wide range of knowledge allows me to approach problems from multiple angles, and I am able to adapt quickly to new technologies and business challenges.

Overall, my unique blend of technical, business, and leadership skills make me an asset to any organization.

Skills

Industry Knowledge

Software Project Management Functional Analysis Software Architecture Infrastructure Architecture Cross-Functional Team Leadership Software Developer Coaching

Web Development

Django Symfony Vue.js Flask Laravel Drupal Silex CakePHP HTML Pug CSS LESS Sass SCSS Javascript TypeScript CoffeeScript Webpack Gulp RESTful API development GraphQL OAuth2 Backbone.js (+ Underscore.js) OpenLayers Leaflet Angular

Mobile App Development

React Native

Software Development

Python LUA PHP Javascript Bash RabbitMQ AMQP MQTT RQ Apache Storm Streamparse Go Java C# A*

Config Management

ansible Puppet

Continuous Deployment/Integration

Jenkins CI Foreman FPM

Containerization

Docker docker-compose LXC

Monitoring, Logging

Logstash Kibana Grafana rsyslog collectd supervisord

Databases

MySQL MongoDB Elasticsearch InfluxDB SQLite

Web/Proxy Servers

Nginx Apache stunnel gunicorn

Storage

LVM

Operating Systems

Debian (preferred) CentOS Ubuntu

Cloud Providers

Azure

Testing

cypress selenium JMeter PHPunit blackfire

Miscellaneous

Common sense

Languages

Dutch (Native speaker) English (Bilingual)

Interests

Sports & Fitness

Strength Training 4x/week

Alcohol

Collection of 70+ bottles of gin Compound gin creation

Game Development

pygame three.js

Hardware Hacking

ESP8266 NodeMCU micropython Arduino Home Assistant Particle.io

Miscellaneous

Open Source DevOps

References

Geoffrey Schampaert
Product Owner, Bluecentury BV / Managing Director, Argus VOF

As an inland shipping veteran, Geoffrey was my non-technical counterpart for about 5 years at Bluecentury. Where I made the technical decisions, he sought to connect with customers and envision our products on a functional level.

Jan Laureys
Managing Director, Bravas BV

Jan and I worked closely together on projects in the law enforcement, leisure and pharmaceutical sectors during our time at Inuits. At Bluecentury, we worked together on building better applications and a better developer experience.

Tony Ameryckx
Managing Director, Bluecentury BV (Former) / Managing Director, Lucentis Consulting VOF

For nearly 5 years, I was the Technical Architect overseeing infrastructure and software development at Bluecentury, a company headed by Tony.

Axel Vankrunkelsven
Managing Director, Raket BV (Former) / Managing Director, axelvnk GCV

Axel and I attempted to combine coaching, recruitment and developer advocacy into one, as we helped fellow developers advance to the next stage in their career at Raket. At Bluecentury, Axel and I overhauled existing software development workflows and brought the company up to date with modern best practices.

Work experience

Bluecentury

Technical Architect

https://bluecentury.eu March 2019 — January 2024
Bluecentury is the company behind Vemasys, a digital inland shipping software platform. Vemasys provides users in the inland shipping industry with end-to-end business control and includes modules for barge operators, fleet owners, terminal operators, insurance agents, certification authorities, shipping agents, accountants and more.

As Technical Architect, my responsibilities included managing the Development and Systems Administration team, designing solutions, implementing infrastructure and software architecture and more. I had final responsibility for the technical team, software/mobile/firmware development, systems administration and "DevOps".

Highlights

  • Managing the technical roadmap and architecture of the Vemasys application/infrastructure.
  • Management and coaching of 10+ direct reports including functional analysts, software engineers, QA engineers and mobile developers in an agile/scrum environment. (stand-ups, sprint planning/retrospectives/(p)reviews, 1-on-1s, pair programming, onboarding, performance reviews, code review, etc..).
  • Systems administration and monitoring of the technical infrastructure ("DevOps", Azure cloud, ansible, grafana, elasticsearch, filebeat, metricbeat, kibana).
  • Software development of the Vemasys core application (Symfony, PHP, python).
  • Firmware development for asset tracker/engine monitoring hardware with CANbus integration (C/C++ on Particle.io platform).
  • Hybrid mobile development of the Vemasys mobile application for Android and iOS (React Native).
  • Creation of continuous deployment/integration/containerized testing pipelines for web, mobile and embedded applications (Jenkins CI, Docker).
  • Migration of entire infrastructure stack to Azure Cloud (Azure cloud, ansible).
  • Development of processing software to analyze real-time navigation data for over 200.000 vessels.
  • Development of a self-improving routing service for waterways (Google Maps, but for ships) using aforementioned navigation data.

Bitsmith

Tech Consultant / Owner

https://bitsmith.be February 2019 — Present
At Bitsmith, I offer quality consulting and contracting services in the areas of software engineering, systems administration, software/infrastructure auditing, technical architecture or technical management.

Raket

Managing Partner

https://raketgroep.be August 2020 — April 2022
Raket was founded by myself and two friends with the goal of sharing our expertise and knowledge gained from successful careers in IT consultancy. We provide exceptional support and guidance to help talented individuals become successful self-employed professionals. Our unique matching service connects top-tier freelancers with exceptional clients, resulting in successful partnerships and mutually beneficial outcomes.

Inuits

Open-Source Consultant

https://inuits.eu April 2013 — February 2019
Inuits is a consulting firm with a unique focus on open-source technology, a leading open-source integrator in Belgium and neighbouring countries and an expert in all domains related to open-source software, virtualization/cloud computing and devops practices.

My task as an Open-Source Consultant was to architect and develop bespoke applications for various customers using open-source technologies, as well as setting up the occassional monitoring/CI/CD toolchain.

Highlights

  • Created a OCR Engine-As-A-Service for Digipolis and the city of Antwerp.
  • Developed a track & trace and reporting application suite for Lokale Politie Antwerpen, the Antwerp Police Department.
  • Developed a multi-tenant Point Of Sale (POS) and accountancy application suite for Sportoase, a chain of sports and fitness centers, along with cash register hardware.
  • Developed a multi-tenant application suite for European Datacomm, a telematics company, consisting of a full-blown fleet/vehicle track & trace system, CRM, call center/incident handling system, REST API behind an OAuth2 server, SMS/GPRS gateways for receiving/sending tracker data, protocol implementations for a large range of tracking devices.
  • Development of a dictionary-like web application to aid non-native minorities in learning the Dutch, French and German languages by providing them with audiovisual supplementary materials.
  • Development of a time-tracking/timesheeting web application for Kras Jeugdwerk, for use by their (HR) employees.
  • Assisted in development of a CRM and shipment management system for IMS International Shipping, a company active in the field of international shipping
  • Lots of other (cool) projects for many customers.

Digipolis

Software Engineer / Consultant

https://digipolis.be November 2018 — December 2018
Digipolis is the company supplying all of the ICT solutions to the cities of Antwerp and Ghent. For them, I was asked to create a OCR Engine-As-A-Service which various parties/services could use to extract text from images.

Tools used: Python, RQ, Docker, Tesseract, Flask, Bamboo

November Five

Serverside Developer / Consultant

https://novemberfive.co June 2017 — February 2018
November Five is a company specialized in the creation of digital products and experiences. I was brought in as a serverside developer to build the M2M integration between Telenet Group/Base and Spotify, but I ended up staying for a few more projects due to the amazing environment and colleagues.

Highlights

Lokale Politie Antwerpen

Software Engineer / Consultant

https://www.politieantwerpen.be/ January 2016 — June 2017
Developed a track & trace and reporting application suite for Lokale Politie Antwerpen, the Antwerp Police Department. This included developing various components such as a REST API, a front-end client, a report builder, hardware communication gateways, real-time message processing systems, (reverse) geocoding services and more.

Tools used: PHP, Python, Javascript, Symfony, AngularJS, MongoDB, Nominatim, Overpass, Graphhopper, MySQL, PHPUnit, Jenkins CI, Docker, RabbitMQ, Apache Storm, Streamparse, crossbar.io
See also: http://www.gva.be/cnt/dmf20170207_02717317/antwerpse-politie-neemt-nieuwe-combi-s-in-gebruik

Sportoase NV

Software Engineer / Consultant

https://sportoase.be/ August 2015 — October 2016
Developed a multi-tenant Point Of Sale (POS) and accountancy application suite for Sportoase, a chain ofsports and fitness centers, along with cash register hardware.

Tools used: PHP, Javascript, Python, Symfony, AngularJS, MySQL, PHPUnit, Jenkins CI, Ansible

European Datacomm NV

Software Engineer / Consultant

https://www.europeandatacomm.com/ August 2013 — December 2015
For European Datacomm, a provider and developer of track & trace applications, I was asked to implement both the front-end and the back-end of a track & trace application suite, as well as a full-featured REST api.

This application had to consist of:
  • A user management component complete with a custom group, role and permission-based access controlsystem for the rest of the application.
  • An asset, contact and contract management component.
  • An incident handling component, intended for use by call centers/incident handling centers, for emergency assistance. The focus of this component was on receiving real-time updates from GPS transmitters.
  • A fleet management component, intended for use by customers. This component contains many reporting features, such as a report builder and scheduler.
  • A full-featured REST API behind OAuth2 authentication, with per-user client management. This API provides nearly all of the functionality the web interface provides, and is used primarily by external services and mobile applications.

Tools used: PHP, Symfony, RabbitMQ, MongoDB, MySQL, Backbone.js, OpenLayers, OAuth2

Kras Jeugdwerk vzw

Software Engineer / Consultant

https://krasjeugdwerk.be/ July 2013 — April 2014
Kras jeugdwerk, an organization focusing on enriching the daily lives of children based in Antwerp, Belgium, came to us intending to replace their current application for managing not only the members and activities oftheir organization, but also the application for keeping track of their employees, their timesheets, leaves ofabsence, etc.

An application was developed consisting of two primary components:
  • A mostly CRUD-based component allowing them to manage organization branches, members and activities, as well as allowing them to create reports based on the aforementioned.
  • A timesheeting component which allows employees to easily register and manage their schedules, leaves ofabsence, holidays, etc.

Tools used: PHP, Symfony, MySQL

Werkhaven Antwerpen vzw

Software Engineer / Consultant

May 2013 — February 2014
For Werkhaven Antwerpen vzw, a non-profit organization whose mission is to help employ minorities, I created an application for managing employee schedules, timesheets, leaves of absence, holidays and the like. The web equivalent of a punch clock was also involved.

Tools used: PHP, Symfony, MySQL

ABS Creative

Software Engineer / Consultant

http://abscreativegroup.com June 2014 — September 2014
ABS Creative, part of the Wunderman Group, is a Brussels-based global healthcare agency that helps pharmaceutical and consumer healthcare companies drive business growth through digital marketing and customer engagement.

I was brought in to be the software engineer responsible for developing various applications.

Highlights

  • Took over development of Interactive Training Tool, ABS' next-generation training application aimed at enterprise customers, as well as implementing a message exchange server and an API for said application.
  • Further developed MyMSD, a portal for medical professionals and particulars conceived by ABS for MSD, a large pharmaceutical company.
  • Created a technical datasheet templating and management system for ATG, a safety glove manufacturer.
  • Blew new life into an outdated eCommerce platform by rewriting it using more modern tools.

ContactSkills

Junior Software Developer

http://contactskills.be March 2013 — March 2013
ContactSkills (formerly "dsk") is a small, Belgian company that specializes in coaching, educating and certifying customer service representatives using their flagship product 'ContactSkills'. My task was to supplement the existing development team, and to expand the features of ContactSkills, tailoring it to suit the needs of their various customers.