Álvaro Vilaplana García

@alvarovilaplana

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Senior Software Engineer with 20+ years' experience, seeking remote roles; open to Spain relocation.

United Kingdom

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What I'm looking for

I'm looking for opportunities where I can tackle real, challenging problems, especially in data-driven projects. I’m eager to collaborate closely with data science teams and am excited to explore opportunities in AI.

I am a Senior Software Engineer with over 20 years of experience designing and building scalable systems for high-traffic production environments. Based in London, I have led teams and collaborated with engineers worldwide on complex projects. With strong communication skills and a high level of autonomy, I excel in remote and distributed teams. I am passionate about solving challenging problems, managing mission-critical systems, and optimising performance. I am currently seeking remote opportunities, with a particular interest in relocating to Spain.

Achievements:

Led the migration of a Gerrit installation from a single region to a multi-region setup across America, Europe, and Asia, improving scalability and performance for 3,000 users and 13,000 Git repositories.
Built a scalable and resilient data platform capable of handling the property acquisition lifecycle for 150,000 properties and 400,000 customers, ensuring high data integrity and seamless performance.
Implemented the Self Assessment and PAYE web applications, supporting 12 million Self Assessment and 30.3 million PAYE taxpayers, while ensuring robust scalability, resiliency, and optimized performance to handle high-demand workloads.

Experience

Work history, roles, and key accomplishments

Current

Senior Software Engineer

Current

GerritForge Inc

Sep 2022 - Present (2 years 9 months)

- Lead technical consultancy for corporations, enhancing Gerrit performance and scalability.
- Delivered critical production support, ensuring stability. - Developed Git repository optimization with Machine Learning (Reinforcement Learning).
- Spearheaded Gerrit multi-region Kubernetes deployment.
- Contribute to open source with features, bug fixes, and roadmaps.

Senior Software Engineer

IMG Arena

Aug 2021 - Jul 2022 (11 months)

- Redesigned data processing by transitioning from a monolithic to a microservices architecture using Scala and Akka (HTTP, Streams), Apache Kafka and PostgreSQL, reducing latency by 30% and improving real-time performance.
- Designed and implemented real-time monitoring dashboards using Prometheus, Loki, and Grafana to help identify bugs and gain insights into system performance and scalability.

Senior Software Engineer

Heimstaden Group

Sep 2020 - Jul 2021 (10 months)

- Architected a data platform with microservices, Event Sourcing, and CQRS using Scala, Akka (HTTP, Streams, Persistence, Projection), Apache Kafka and MySQL.
- Designed a canonical data model in collaboration with product experts across 9 European countries, driving system integration and ensuring regional data consistency.

Senior Software Engineer

11FS Foundry

Jan 2019 - Aug 2020 (1 year 7 months)

- Developed a scalable data platform by creating ETL pipelines with Scala, Apache Flink, and Apache Kafka to ensure reliable data processing and integration.
- Built CI/CD pipelines using Concourse CI/CD and Git Actions, enabling seamless daily deployments to Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) and Amazon Kubernetes Service (EKS).

Senior Software Engineer

SKY

Dec 2017 - Jan 2019 (1 year 1 month)

- Implemented ETL pipelines for a recommendation engine for Sky products (Sky Q, Sky+, NowTV) across the UK, Germany, Italy, and Spain, using Scala, Apache Spark, and Apache Kafka and Apache Cassandra.
- Developed a multi-tenant REST API for delivering personalized recommendations, utilising Scala and Akka (HTTP, Streams) to ensure scalability and high performance.

Senior Software Engineer

British Gas

Nov 2016 - Nov 2017 (1 year)

- Designed the data model and structured data ingested from client boilers.
- Implemented ETL pipelines with Complex Event Processing (CEP) using Scala, Apache Flink, Apache Spark, Apache Kafka, Couchbase, AWS (EMR, Batch), Apache Zeppelin, PySpark and Python.

Scala Apache Flink Apache Spark Apache Kafka ETL Data Modeling Monitoring IoT RabbitMQ RESTful APIs WebSockets Data Platform Grafana Prometheus Loki Terraform Amazon EMR Continuous Integration Continuous Delivery

Tech Lead

Now TV / SKY

Dec 2015 - Oct 2016 (10 months)

- Led a team of 8 engineers to redesign the multi-device Billing REST API using a share-nothing microservice architecture and DDD, leveraging Scala, Spray, Akka, Python, RabbitMQ and PostgreSQL.
- Revamped End-to-End tests using Behavior-Driven Development (BDD) with Scala, Cucumber, and Gherkin, enhancing feature delivery confidence and ensuring robust testing of new functionalities.

Scala Microservices REST APIs Domain Driven Design Behavior Driven Development Test Driven Development TDD BDD RESTful APIs Akka Akka HTTP Jenkins Team Management Team Lead PostgreSQL Gradle

Tech Lead

HMRC Tax Platform

Aug 2013 - Nov 2015 (2 years 3 months)

- Led a team of 5 engineers to design and implement a microservice-based architecture for the PAYG and SA tax services website, leveraging Scala, Play Framework, Python, MongoDB, and RabbitMQ.
- Automated the software lifecycle using Jenkins CI/CD pipelines, while designing microservice versioning and deployment strategies, ensuring seamless production rollouts and scalable architecture.