René Schultz
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René Schultz

Current location:

Roadtrip 🚗 🇺🇸

next: 🇩🇪 🇳🇴 🇷🇴 🇪🇬 🇫🇷 🇪🇸 🇮🇨
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About Me

Who I am

Hi, I'm René! I'm from Hamburg, Germany though I work and/or travel around the globe at the moment.

What I do

Academic Background
I hold a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Engineering from the University of Applied Sciences in Hamburg. Instead of specializing in one topic, I chose a variety of courses such as IT security and database design.

Work
During college, I started working for a German-Norwegian eCommerce startup as a software engineer for ~4 years. In 2018 I started working on a variety of projects and contracts as the Director of Engineering at Bertholf Ventures, mainly as the CTO and CoFounder of DIYDIFM/marketAIng and as the CTO for hire of Kndrd. At the beginning of 2019 we went through a Techstars program in Amsterdam. After various freelancing gigs, I am now the Director, Engineering of ConnectedHealth, also fully remote. Since 2019 I'm a Certified Laravel Developer.

I have multiple years of experience in the following areas:

  • Data modeling and database design for relational and NoSQL databases
  • Software Architecture and Security for SaaS
  • API Integrations
  • Technology stack: PHP (Laravel), JavaScript, Java and Python
  • Process BI information
  • Server Administration and DevOps/CI/CD
  • Working 100% remote, no fixed office
  • Coaching new employees and oversee freelancer work

When I'm not working I enjoy

Memberships
  • Active contributor to the German Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects since 2006
  • Contributor to OpenStreetMap and Transifex (Open Source Translation)
  • I regularly go to (Tech-) Meetups in whenever I stay in big cities
  • For the past decade I've attended a variety of tech conferences such as the CCC in Germany

Travel
I enjoy traveling, especially by bike or on foot, meeting new people and exploring foreign cultures and cuisines. I plan to visit every country eventually, see travel section. I write about my travels on my Instagram and Travel Blog.

Programming skills

PHP
SQL
JS + Node.js
Java
Python
C/C++
Basic to intermediate knowledge
Perl Processing Bash VHDL Matlab Assembler Scala PL/SQL

IT Skills

Web
HTML5/ CSS3 Templating Engines (e.g. Blade) JavaScript Laravel Livewire Vue.js, Alpine.js, jQuery REST and SOAP APIs WordPress, Drupal, Joomla SSG (e.g. Jekyll) AMP Structured Data (schema.org)
Server Administration
Apache, lighttpd, nginx MySQL Redis Memcached OpenSSH OpenVPN Samba prosody (XMPP) ownCloud
Databases
MySQL & MariaDB Oracle SQLite PL/SQL Redis CouchDB ERM
Meta / DevOps
Version Control (Git/SVN) Packages / Dependency Management (composer/npm/maven) Eclipse, MySQL Workbench, pgAdmin VMware / VirtualBox Linux: Debian, Ubuntu, SLES AWS, DigitalOcean, Cloudflare, Azure, Google Cloud Unit Testing, BDD Vagrant / Docker / Kubernetes (DOKS) Laravel Envoyer / Forge, Ploi.io CI/CD (GitLab Runner / Bitbucket) Image editing (e.g. Gimp, ImageMagick)
SaaS / APIs / SDKs I've worked with
Firebase (FCM) Sendgrid Mailgun Shippo Pusher HubSpot Twilio Stripe AppStore Connect Ahrefs Moz
Other technologies and services I've worked with
Website Parsing & Testing (Selenium, WebDriver, xPath) Regular Expressions (RegEx) Queues (e.g. ActiveMQ, Laravel Horizon) Podcast Tech LaTeX VBA Technical SEO Microcontrollers & FPGAs SSO/oAuth Matlab/Simulink Google Play Store/F-Droid PHP frameworks (e.g. symfony) Node.js frameworks (e.g. express) Frontend JS frameworks (e.g. Vue.js, alpine.js) Java Frameworks (e.g. akka) C++ Frameworks Java RMI/JMS CLI tool frameworks (Laravel Zero) WebXR (A-Frame) Stable Diffusion
Recruiters: Not all of these are neccesarily my areas of expertise (look at my experience for that) but I did work with these technologies. Ctrl+F away! :-)

Languages

🇩🇪 German (native)
🇺🇸 English (native)
🇫🇷 French (B1 II1)
🇮🇨 Spanish (A22)

1, 2 According to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages

Education and experiences

Education
2010 - 2014 Bachelor of Science in Computer Engineering
Hamburg University of Applied Sciences
Work experience
2021 - now Director, Engineering at ConnectedHealth Pte Ltd
2020 - now Laravel Consultant at Repat LLC
2018 - 2021 Director of Engineering at Bertholf Ventures
CTO & CoFounder at marketAIng
2018 - 2019 CTO for hire at Kndrd.io
2014 - 2017 Senior Software Engineer at twentyfour Germany (Actwill GmbH)
Continued Professional Development
2019 Certified Laravel Developer
2019 Arcadis City of 2030 Accelerator, powered by Techstars
Other experiences
2009 - 2010 Working holiday program in Australia
2008 - 2009 Mandatory Basic Military Service (OR-3)

Travel

UN + 3* countries: 108/196
Albania, Andorra, Angola, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Belarus, Belgium, Belize, Bolivia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Botswana, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Cape Verde, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Cuba, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Egypt, El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, Estonia, Eswatini, Ethiopia, Finland, Fiji, France, Gabon, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Guatemala, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Kenya, Kosovo, Kuwait, Latvia, Lebanon, Lesotho, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malawi, Malaysia, Malta, Mexico, Moldova, Monaco, Montenegro, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Netherlands, Nicaragua, New Zealand, North Macedonia, Norway, Oman, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Romania, Russia, Rwanda, Saint Kitts and Nevis, San Marino, São Tomé and Príncipe, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland, Tanzania, Thailand, Tunisia, Turkey, Uganda, UK, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, USA, Vatican City State, Vietnam, Zambia, Zimbabwe

* italic are widely recognized but not (full) UN members (PS, VA, XK)
Africa 22/54

N. America 11/23

S. America 6/12

Asia 22/49

Europe 44/44

Australia/Oceania 3/14
Other lists
NomadMania: 252/1301
Most Traveled People: 260/1500
Travelers' Century Club: 125/330
NomadList: 110/274
ISO 3166: 109/249
Countries per year:
  • 2022: 12
  • 2021: 1 🇳🇿
  • 2020: 6
  • 2019: 37
  • 2018: 33
  • 2017: 12
Visited
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Projects (excerpt)

repat.de - my blog
thumbnail repat.de

On my personal blog I've been writing about programming, Linux and all things tech for over 15 years.

webchangedetector.com - automated screenshot comparison
thumbnail webchangedetector.com

When updating WordPress websites, it happens all too often that things break. This tool takes screenshots before and after an update, compares the screenshots and tells you what changed. I rewrote the backend and API as a Laravel app.

droid-break.info - high quality open source Android apps
thumbnail droid-break.info

Inspired by prism-break.org I created Droid-Break to list high quality alternatives to the big proprietary solutions. The source code is available on GitHub.