René Schultz

Current location:

Gran Canaria 🇮🇨

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

Riding motorcycles, skating, cycling, running, hiking, camping, swimming, kayaking
Playing guitar, cooking and gardening
Scuba diving: currently a PADI Divemaster (#408408) & Technical Diver
Skydiving (NZPIA B-License) & Paragliding (IPPI-3 / PG-2)
Ham Radio: KN6DZC
Maintaining several blogs and websites
Creating and contributing to free software
Education: Taking MOOC & language classes, watching Laracasts, reading or listening to podcasts

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.

PHP

SQL

JS + Node.js

Java

Python

C/C++

Basic to intermediate knowledge

Perl Processing Bash VHDL Matlab Assembler Scala PL/SQL

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! :-)

🇩🇪 German (native)

🇺🇸 English (native)

🇫🇷 French (B1 II¹)

🇮🇨 Spanish (A2²)

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

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: 254/1301

Most Traveled People: 262/1500

Travelers' Century Club: 126/330

NomadList: 110/274

ISO 3166: 109/249

Countries per year:

2022: 12
2021: 1 🇳🇿
2020: 6

2019: 37
2018: 33
2017: 12

Visited
Next

repat.de - my blog

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

webchangedetector.com - automated screenshot comparison

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

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.

René Schultz

Gran Canaria 🇮🇨

About Me

Who I am

What I do

Programming skills

IT Skills

Languages

Education and experiences

Travel

Projects (excerpt)

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

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.

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.