René Schultz
  • Home
  • About me
  • Programming
  • Skills
  • Languages
  • Experiences
  • Projects
  • Blog
profile

René Schultz

About Me

Who I am

Hi, I'm René! I'm from Hamburg, Germany.

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. I've since worked for a variety of clients as a freelance developer and consultant. In 2024 I joined WebChange Detector, a previous client, as CTO.

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
  • Processing BI information
  • Server Administration, DevOps and 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, 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 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 bicycle 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 symfony Livewire Vue.js Alpine.js jQuery REST SOAP WordPress Drupal Joomla SSG (e.g. Jekyll) AMP Structured Data (schema.org)
Server Administration
Apachen lighttpd nginx MySQL Redis Memcached OpenSSH OpenVPN Samba prosody (XMPP) ownCloud
Databases
MySQL & MariaDB Oracle SQLite PL/SQL Redis CouchDB ERM
SaaS / APIs / SDKs
Firebase (FCM) Sendgrid Mailgun Shippo Pusher HubSpot Twilio Stripe AppStore Connect Ahrefs Moz Zapier
Meta / DevOps
Version Control (Git/SVN) Eclipse, MySQL Workbench, pgAdmin VMware / VirtualBox Packages / Dependency Management (composer/npm/maven) Linux: Debian, Ubuntu, SLES Cloudflare AWS, DigitalOcean, Azure, Google Cloud Unit Testing, BDD Vagrant / Docker / Kubernetes (DOKS) Envoyer.io deployer.org Laravel Forge CI/CD (GitLab Runner / Bitbucket / GitHub Actions) Image editing (e.g. Gimp, ImageMagick)
Misc
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 Node.js frameworks (e.g. Express) Frontend JS frameworks 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 necessarily 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 (A21)

1 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
2024 - now CTO at WebChange Detector
2020 - now Owner / 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

Countries & Regions

UN + 3* countries: 123/196
Albania, Andorra, Angola, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Belarus, Belgium, Belize, Bolivia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Botswana, Brazil, Brunei, Bulgaria, Burundi, Cambodia, Canada, Cape Verde, China, Colombia, Comoros, 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, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kosovo, Kuwait, Kyrgystan, Laos, Latvia, Lebanon, Lesotho, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malawi, Malaysia, Malta, Mauritania, Mauritius, 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, Senegal, Serbia, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Thailand, Tunisia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Uganda, UK, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, Uruguay, USA, Uzbekistan, Vatican City State, Vietnam, Zambia, Zimbabwe

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


Africa 27/54

N. America 11/23

S. America 7/12

Asia 30/49

Europe 44/44

Australia/Oceania 3/14
Other lists
NomadMania: 321/1301

Most Traveled People: 323/1500

Travelers' Century Club: 149/332

NomadList: 127/275

ISO 3166: 127/249

WHS: 121/1223

Countries per year:
  • 2024: 33
  • 2023: 31
  • 2022: 12
  • 2021: 1 🇳🇿
  • 2020: 6
  • 2019: 37
  • 2018: 33
  • 2017: 12
  • 2016: 5
Visited
Next

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 - visual regression testing
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 and joined as CTO in 2024.

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.

Imprint