Sebastian Thiel

Sebastian Thiel

Software Engineer, married, one child

Berlin, Germany

Summary

Sebastian is an independent, self-taught Open-Source Software Engineer with old roots in the visual effects industry. During that time, he implemented and supported the Autodesk Maya integration of Scanline's academy awarded FlowLine Fluid Simulation Software.

More recently, he worked in agile teams to build the right products iteratively and on the full stack ranging from platform over backend to frontend.

He believes in test-driven development, and aims at producing highly maintainable, long-lasting and secure code. Workflow automation, may it be his own or the one of others, is among his greatest strengths. Providing best support for his work environment is one of his highest goals.

Documents

Professional Experience

  • Freelance Software Developer Self Employed

    Freelance Software Developer

    Self Employed

    – 8 months Xi'an, China

    Sebastian provides services as software developer and technical analyst.

    Software Projects

    Analysis and Software Development

    • Web-AR Experience for Major German Supermarket Chain OMSTUDIOS Berlin

      Web-AR Experience for Major German Supermarket Chain

      OMSTUDIOS Berlin

      –

      Analyse project for technical feasibility and keep software development on track using GitHub Projects and Issues.

      The techstack was TypeScript, along with supporting infrastructure scripts to power GitHub Actions for CI and CD onto Azure.
  • Senior Developer Consultant ThoughtWorks

    Senior Developer Consultant

    ThoughtWorks

    – 7 months Xi'an, China

    He worked for a business unit serving english speaking customers.

    Delivery Projects

    • Self Service Portal for Cloud Services

      Australian Software Company

      –

      Sebastian contributed his full breadth of experience from the very inception of the project, establishing himself as mediator between Australia and China, technical analyst to unblock complex stories as well as technical leader to get the project off the ground driving a setup for CI/CD supporting both frontend and backend tests.

      The techstack involved React, TypeScript, Redux in the frontend, Java and Spring in the backend, as well as Docker to assure reproducability on CI and CD onto AWS.
  • Senior Developer Consultant ThoughtWorks

    Senior Developer Consultant

    ThoughtWorks

    – 4 years 1 month Hamburg, Germany

    He is a seasoned C, C++ and Python programmer with additional experience more recent programming languages such as JavaScript, Golang and Rust. Safety and maintainability are his highest goals when designing and implementing quality software.

    Consulting Projects

    • Trainer

      ThoughtWorks University

      –

      ThoughtWorks University is an intensive, hands-on experience, where graduates and new-starters learn how to build working software from week one. It’s all about getting them ready to take on the challenges our clients face with confidence, and setting them up with a ready-made global network of friends and mentors.

    • Co-Delivery and Enablement

      European Car Rental Company

      –

      Sebastian joined as a frontend developer initially using React on JavaScript. Besides using every opportunity to spread knowledge about frontend development, he transformed the code-base to use Redux for state management to increase the ease of use. As a final step in the pursuit of maintainability he guided the partial transformation of the codebase to Typescript, making the codebase even more accessible.

    • Platform Migration

      Major Cash & Carry Logistics Company

      –

      Sebastian helped to shape next generation services centered around Kubernetes, and implemented tooling in Golang to automate the transition of existing clients. He ran workshops to train teams on the new tooling.
      On a secondary line of work, Sebastian was responsible for bringing to live a proof of concept application to help various departments with automating their offerings.

    • Service Platform

      Major Cash & Carry Logistics Company

      –

      Sebastian helped with the implementation of a service for funneling deployments to Kubernetes. Technology used was Docker Engine, Kubernetes, Golang and Jenkins for CI/CD.
      Some of the work involved adding features to a React application.

    • Payments and Invoicing App

      Major Cash & Carry Logistics Company

      –

      Sebastian was involved in the project for several months and was in charge of providing a simplified solution for storing confidential sets of data, and rolled it out to various teams and projects.
      Technology used was GPG, Pass, and Make. His passion for this topic went as far as solving this problem once more using with open-source software in the form of 'Share Secrets Safely' written in Rust.

    • Truck Delivery App

      Major Cash & Carry Logistics Company

      –

      Sebastian worked as a consultant developer with the client for several months on site. He helped producing a mobile application sporting a React frontend and Java/Spring backend that integrated with the Open-Stack Cloud environment of the client’s infrastructure.
      Technical concepts like Docker Engine Containerization and CI/CD and XP methodologies like TDD and Pair Programming played a major role throughout the entire development and maintenance effort.

    • Quality Assurance App

      German Chain of Coffee Retailers

      –

      Sebastian was involved in wrapping up an offline-first web-application to help managing products and their quality. This work included adjusting the AngularJS-based frontend, as well as the Java/Spring based backend, the MongoDB, Golang, continuous integration, and finally deployment using Ansible on AWS.

    Personal Software Projects

  • Software Engineer Self Employed

    Software Engineer

    Self Employed

    His YouTube channel – His presence in the Rust crate repository, with his top contributions listed by downloads. 1 year 6 months Munich, Germany

    While recovering from the previous experience, he intensively studied Rust and shared his findings on his YouTube channel.

    Software Projects

  • Trixter Film GmbH

    Trixter Film GmbH

    1 year 7 months

    Head of Technology

    – 11 months Munich, Germany

    Guide information technology infrastructure development and to support the company's requirement.
    Finished projects during that time include
    a universal development and software distribution environment for TDs, developers and system administrators,
    a Centos based TRIXTER linux distribution in multiple variants, including netboot capability,
    a ZFS management system to deal with multi-server data hosting, snapshots and backups.

  • Senior Pipeline Consultant

    – 5 months Munich, Germany

    Help designing and implementing next-generation pipeline software.

  • Pipeline Developer

    – 3 months Munich, Germany

    Devise a concept for an entirely new pipeline and help to bring it into reality.
  • Pipeline Engineer OMSTUDIOS Berlin

    Pipeline Engineer

    OMSTUDIOS Berlin

    – 6 months Berlin, Germany

    Integrate software into Shotgun and automate workflows.

    Software Projects

  • FlowLine GmbH

    FlowLine GmbH

    3 years 1 month

    FlowLine Developer

    – 11 months Munich, Germany

    Help developing and maintaining FlowLine fluid simulation software.

  • FlowLine Maya Maintainer

    – 2 years 2 months Berlin, Germany

    General maintenance of the FlowLine-Maya port.

    Personal Software Projects

  • Pipeline Supervisor WhiteShark AB

    Pipeline Supervisor

    WhiteShark AB

    – 1 year Stockholm, Sweden

    Design and implementation of a python based 3D movie production pipeline.
  • Pipeline Engineer Self Employed

    Pipeline Engineer

    Self Employed

    – 4 months Toulouse, France

    Doing independent software and pipeline development and a sabbatical traveling through europe.
  • Pipeline Supervisor Toons'n'Tales

    Pipeline Supervisor

    Toons'n'Tales

    – 1 year 2 months Hamburg, Germany

    Design and setup the complete working infrastructure, involving the incorporation of 3D software products into the production managment workflow.
    Project was: "Jasper: Journey to the End of the World".
  • Pipeline TD CA Scanline

    Pipeline TD

    CA Scanline

    – 10 months Munich, Germany

    Creation and maintenance of a Maya development environment, Maya tool programming, and FlowLine Maya Support.
    Project was: "Lissi und der wilde Kaiser".
  • Pipeline TD Berliner Film Companie

    Pipeline TD

    Berliner Film Companie

    – 1 year 6 months Berlin, Germany

    Applied as TD, worked 8 month as previsualization artist, and finally helped doing pipeline work, involving MEL scripting, Perl and Maya API. The project was: "Happily N'Ever After".
  • Programmer Self Employed

    Programmer

    Self Employed

    The code was uploaded years after its creation, using GitHub as an archive – The old website I used to describe the product 1 year 4 months Berlin, Germany

    Creation and development of ByronsPolyTools - a modeling plugin for Maya
    using C++ and Cmake.
    It was sold for a little more than a year to more than 350 clients, a moderate success but enough to keep Sebastian going.

Volunteering Experience

  • Teacher and Tutor ReDI School of Digital Integration

    Teacher and Tutor

    ReDI School of Digital Integration

    Munich, Germany

    Economic Empowerment

    Teach and tutor folks to help them get started in the world of 'digital'.
  • Caregiver

    Caregiver

    Tiele-Winckler-Haus GmbH

    – 10 months Berlin, Germany

    Take care of the elderly as part of fulfilling duties during civil service.

Languages

  • German

    Native proficiency

  • English

    Full professional proficiency

Glossary

  • Docker

    A tool designed to simplify the creation, deployment, and running of applications by using containers. Containers allow a developer to package up an application with all of the parts it needs, such as libraries and other dependencies, and deploy it as one package.

  • Visual Effects

    The process by which imagery is created or manipulated outside the context of a live action shot in film making, commonly with the use of a computer.

  • Autodesk Maya

    A 3D computer graphics application for modeling, animation and rendering. Commonly used in visual effects.

    https://www.autodesk.com/products/maya/overview

  • FlowLine

    Software to realisically simulate and render fluids, fire and smoke for stunning visual effects.

    http://www.flowlines.info

  • C++

    A general-purpose programming language created by Bjarne Stroustrup as an extension of the C programming language, or "C with Classes".

    http://www.cplusplus.com

  • C

    A general-purpose, procedural computer programming language supporting structured programming, lexical variable scope, and recursion, while a static type system prevents unintended operations.

  • Python

    An interpreted, high-level, general-purpose programming language. Created by Guido van Rossum and first released in 1991, Python's design philosophy emphasizes code readability with its notable use of significant whitespace.

    https://www.python.org

  • CMake

    A cross-platform free and open-source software tool for managing the build process of software using a compiler-independent method.

    https://cmake.org

  • Backend & Frontend

    The separation of concerns between the presentation layer (front end), and the data access layer (back end) of a piece of software. In the client–server model, the client is usually considered the front end and the server is usually considered the back end, even when some presentation work is actually done on the server itself.

  • Test Driven Development

    A software development process that relies on the repetition of a very short development cycle : requirements are turned into very specific test cases, then the software is improved so that the tests pass.

  • Maya Embedded Language

    A scripting language used to simplify tasks in Maya. Most tasks that can be achieved through Maya's GUI can be achieved with MEL, as well as certain tasks that are not available from the GUI.

  • Graphical User Interface

    A form of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices through graphical icons and visual indicators such as secondary notation, instead of text-based user interfaces, typed command labels or text navigation.

  • Previsualization

    The visualizing of complex scenes in a movie before filming. It is also a concept in still photography. Previsualization is used to describe techniques such as storyboarding, either in the form of charcoal sketches or in digital technology, in the planning and conceptualization of movie scenes.

  • Scripting Language

    A programming language for a special run-time environment that automates the execution of tasks; the tasks could alternatively be executed one-by-one by a human operator.

  • Perl

    Perl is a family of two high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming languages.

  • Maya Application Programming Interface

    A way to interact with Maya using its C++ programming interface.

  • Pipeline

    The ideal and optimal combination of processes that define how the final image in visual effects is produced. It allows to apply the smallest amount of processing needed to regenerate an image as its input change to satisfy client requests, and keeps track of all previously produced versions.

  • TD

    A person who aids in producing primarily visual effects using technical means. This commonly involves scripting in MEL and Python.

  • Maya Development Environment

    A suite of tools and processes to aid developers to write tools for Autodesk Maya.

  • Sabbatical

    A sabbatical is a rest or break from work.

  • Shotgun

    Project management and pipeline tools that help creative studios track, schedule, review, collaborate, and manage their digital assets.

    https://www.shotgunsoftware.com

  • Information Technology

    the use of computers to store, retrieve, transmit, and manipulate data,[1] or information, often in the context of a business or other enterprise

  • Rust

    A language empowering everyone to build reliable and efficient software.

    https://www.rust-lang.org

  • YouTube

    YouTube allows users to upload, view, rate, share, add to playlists, report, comment on videos, and subscribe to other users. It offers a wide variety of user-generated and corporate media videos.

  • JavaScript

    Alongside HTML and CSS, JavaScript is one of the core technologies of the World Wide Web.[9] JavaScript enables interactive web pages and is an essential part of web applications. The vast majority of websites use it,[10] and major web browsers have a dedicated JavaScript engine to execute it.

    https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript

  • Golang

    A statically typed, compiled programming language at Google. It is syntactically similar to C, but with memory safety, garbage collection, structural typing, and concurrency.

    https://golang.org

  • React

    A JavaScript library for building user interfaces. It is maintained by Facebook and a community of individual developers and companies.

    https://reactjs.org

  • Redux

    An open-source JavaScript library for managing application state. It is most commonly used with libraries such as React or Angular for building user interfaces.

    https://redux.js.org

  • TypeScript

    An open-source programming language developed and maintained by Microsoft. It is a strict syntactical superset of JavaScript, and adds optional static typing to the language.

    http://www.typescriptlang.org

  • Kubernetes

    An open-source container-orchestration system for automating application deployment, scaling, and management. It aims to provide a "platform for automating deployment, scaling, and operations of application containers across clusters of hosts".

    https://kubernetes.io

  • Docker Engine

    An engine using OS-level virtualization to deliver software in packages called containers. Containers are lightweight and secure ways of running software on various platform, abstracting their differences.

    https://www.docker.com

  • Jenkins

    A free and open source automation server written in Java. Jenkins helps to automate the non-human part of the software development process, with continuous integration and facilitating technical aspects of continuous delivery.

    https://jenkins.io

  • Continuous Integration

    The practice of merging all developers' working copies to a shared mainline several times a day.

  • Continuous Deployment

    A software engineering approach in which software functionalities are delivered frequently through automated deployments.

  • GnuPG

    A hybrid-encryption software program because it uses a combination of conventional symmetric-key cryptography for speed, and public-key cryptography for ease of secure key exchange.

    https://angular.io

  • Pass

    Password management should be simple and follow Unix philosophy.

    https://www.passwordstore.org

  • Make

    A build automation tool that automatically builds executable programs and libraries from source code by reading files called Makefiles which specify how to derive the target program.

  • Container

    A container image is a lightweight, standalone, executable package of software that includes everything needed to run an application: code, runtime, system tools, system libraries and settings. When executed by an engine, an image is called a container.

  • Extreme Programming

    A software development methodology which is intended to improve software quality and responsiveness to changing customer requirements. As a type of agile software development,[1][2][3] it advocates frequent "releases" in short development cycles, which is intended to improve productivity and introduce checkpoints at which new customer requirements can be adopted.

  • Pair Programming

    An agile software development technique in which two programmers work together at one workstation. One, the driver, writes code while the other, the observer or navigator,[1] reviews each line of code as it is typed in. The two programmers switch roles frequently.

  • Offline-First Applications

    Apps that support a seamless experience when a user transitions between an online to offline state without compromising the experience.

  • Angular JS

    A JavaScript-based open-source front-end web framework to address many of the challenges encountered in developing single-page applications.

    https://angular.io

  • Java

    A general-purpose programming language that is class-based and object-oriented.

    http://oracle.com/java/

  • Spring

    An application framework and inversion of control container for the Java platform.

    https://spring.io

  • Mongo Database

    A general purpose, document-based, distributed database built for modern application developers and for the cloud era. No database is more productive to use.

    https://www.mongodb.com

  • Ansible

    An open-source software provisioning, configuration management, and application-deployment tool. It includes its own declarative language to describe system configuration.

    https://www.ansible.com

  • Amazon Web Services

    A subsidiary of Amazon that provides on-demand cloud computing platforms to individuals, companies, and governments, on a metered pay-as-you-go basis.

    https://aws.amazon.com