Understand the problem first
Good software starts with understanding the domain. I like sitting with the messy real-world rules before writing a line of code.
Software engineer · Bucharest, Romania
Hi, I'm Rares. I build software people rely on every day.
Right now that means the HR platform thousands of companies use to run their workday. Before that, it meant keeping student apps online, teaching Linux, and turning my home into a tiny data centre.
- 2+
- years building software professionally
- 75k+
- employees managed daily through the platform I work on
- 3.5k+
- students who used the apps I kept online
- 50+
- volunteers I coordinated in a student IT department
01 · About
The short version.
I'm a software engineer who enjoys the whole journey of a product: understanding what people actually need, turning that into clean code, and making sure it keeps running smoothly long after launch.
At work I build the kind of software most people never notice but depend on daily: the system that tracks your working hours, plans your shifts, approves your holidays and keeps your personnel file in order. It has to be correct, fast and compliant with labour law, which makes it a surprisingly deep problem to solve well.
Outside work I'm drawn to how things run underneath: servers, networks, security. I'm doing a master's in cybersecurity, I taught Linux to university students for three years, and I run a small home server just for the joy of it.
Quick facts
- RoleFull-stack engineer, .NET & Angular
- FocusEnterprise web apps, APIs, infrastructure
- EducationB.Sc. Computer Science · M.Sc. Cybersecurity (in progress)
- LanguagesRomanian, English, some German
- EnjoysTeaching, automating things, home-server projects
Ship things people use
A feature only counts once it's in someone's hands. I care about releases, feedback loops and fixing what breaks.
Make it boring to operate
The best systems are the ones nobody has to think about: automated, monitored, and secure by default.
Toolbox
The technologies I reach for most often.
Languages
- C#
- TypeScript / JavaScript
- Python
- C / C++
- Java
- Kotlin
- SQL
- Bash
Frameworks
- .NET Core
- Angular
- React
- Node.js
- Express
- Android SDK
Data
- Microsoft SQL Server
- MongoDB
- Redis
Infrastructure
- Docker
- Kubernetes
- Linux
- Nginx
- GitHub Actions
- Prometheus
- Grafana
- Loki
Practices
- Domain-Driven Design
- CI/CD
- REST APIs
- WebSockets
- Clean code
02 · Journey
Where I've been so far.
Work, volunteering and studies, newest first.
-
M.Sc. in Advanced Cybersecurity · Politehnica University of Bucharest
Going deeper into how systems are attacked and defended: security protocols, software security and privacy, cloud security.
-
Junior Programmer · Creasoft, Bucharest
I help build a platform that 500+ companies use to manage 75,000+ employees: attendance, shift planning, leave, personnel files, self-service and performance reviews.
- Work across the full stack with .NET Core, Angular and SQL Server, using Domain-Driven Design to model complex labour-law and payroll rules.
- Build REST APIs that connect the platform to payroll and ERP systems, and to RFID, Bluetooth and QR access-control terminals.
- Team up with QA to reproduce and fix defects, improving release quality.
-
IT Department Coordinator & Infrastructure Engineer · LSAC, student league
I led the team that builds and runs the software behind a 3,500-person student community.
- Coordinated 50+ volunteers over a full academic year and owned delivery of the league's internal applications.
- Kept 10+ applications online and supported them during events and major releases.
-
Undergraduate Teaching Assistant · Politehnica University of Bucharest
For three years I taught first-year students how Linux works, from the command line to security basics.
- Ran hands-on labs on the shell, file systems, networking, Bash automation, users and permissions, and security investigation.
- Wrote and graded assignments and mentored students through the end-of-course capture-the-flag challenge.
-
B.Sc. in Computer Science · Politehnica University of Bucharest
Faculty of Automatic Control and Computer Science. Where the teaching, the student league and most of the projects below happened.
Certifications
- Android Development with Kotlin (Google)
- Security Summer School — Essentials and Web
- MERN Stack Crash Course
Languages
- Romanian — native
- English — professional
- German — basic
03 · Projects
Things I've built.
“Ce Spun Automatiștii?” live game show
2024 · led a team of 8
A Family Feud-style contest played live by 100+ students, with a moderator screen and a spectator screen that stay perfectly in sync as the game unfolds.
Under the hood: React, Node.js, MongoDB, real-time updates over WebSockets and Redis.
One dashboard for every student app
2023 · student league
Ten-plus applications serving 3,500 students, and no way to tell at a glance which were healthy. I built the monitoring that changed that, so problems were spotted before students noticed them.
Under the hood: Grafana dashboards on Prometheus metrics and Loki logs, hosted behind Nginx.
A home server that runs like a cloud
2025 — ongoing · personal
My own miniature data centre: media streaming, a private AI assistant, dashboards and automation, all managed the way real production systems are.
Under the hood: Kubernetes, containers, automated TLS certificates, a GPU shared between workloads.
Read more04 · Home lab
My home server, explained.
Think of it as a small cloud in a cupboard. It's where I try out the tools big companies run on, learn from what breaks, and host a few things that make daily life nicer. This very page is served from it.
A private streaming service
Movies, series and subtitles organised automatically and streamed to any screen in the house, like a personal Netflix.
Under the hood: a media server with hardware-accelerated transcoding on the GPU, plus a set of automation services that keep the library tidy.
An AI assistant that never leaves home
A chat assistant and an image generator running entirely on my own hardware, so nothing I type is sent to a third party.
Under the hood: open-source language models on a consumer graphics card, shared between several workloads at once.
Dashboards for everything
Every service reports how it's doing. If something slows down or breaks, I get a notification before anyone in the house notices.
Under the hood: Prometheus metrics, centralised logs and Grafana dashboards, the same stack I built for the student league.
Private by default
Nothing is exposed to the internet unless I decide it should be. Everything else is reachable only from my own devices, wherever I am.
Under the hood: an encrypted private network, automatically renewed certificates, and a single guarded doorway for the few public things like this site.
Why bother?
Because it's the cheapest way to learn what production really feels like. Upgrades that break at midnight, disks that fill up, certificates that expire: every problem is a lesson I get to bring back to work. And everything is written down as code, so the whole thing can be rebuilt from scratch in an afternoon.
05 · Contact
Let's talk.
Whether it's a role, a project, or just a question, I'd love to hear from you. I usually reply within a day.