Sebastian Weikart Profile

About Sebastian Weikart

I am a hands-on, agile minded leader and full stack engineer with over 15 years experience, I worked in many different roles and industries, mainly in E-Commerce and FinTech. I consider myself as someone who likes to lead by example - I like to be hands on, build things from scratch, try out new technologies, and get things done. I enable people by giving them the time, mentoring and resources they need, provide my advice and experience when asked and required, and challenge my own and the teams believes, perspectives and assumptions. My philosophy is to be as lean as possible - start with a small scope, but to go live very fast. Afterwards, start iterating on the stack to release new features. If the task is huge, break it down in the smallest individual increments possible. My goal is to always be on your toes for changes - don’t assume too much upfront, minimise huge upfront designs, question your perspectives - things will change down the line. A huge project will take many different turns, and learnings are done along the way. My goal is always to create lasting, impactful long term success, and it is my deep conviction that in every company, the actual investment is the investment into the people, not in lines of code or a specific technology. That is why I prefer to exert Agile and High Performance Leadership - create a working environment where everyone can feel comfortable, where everyone is empowered to allow them to do what they want to do, to bring in their best skills and leverage their potential. The principle of End to End Ownership, aka. DevOps, is in this context indispensable to achieve this.

My Favourite Technologies at the moment

  • Node.JS
  • React
  • Elixir / Phoenix
  • Docker
  • Terraform
  • GraphQL
  • AWS

Curriculum Vitae

  • People centric leader - passionate about establishing great team cultures with people who enjoy working together building great software products
  • Strong believer in excellent engineering practices such as test and behaviour driven delivery, API first, cloud-based applications, automating everything, end to end responsibility, CI/CD, infrastructure as code, DevOps principles Successful track record of hiring and building out teams; leading, mentoring and working with engineering teams with different skill levels (junior to senior) and across different functions, transforming teams from silo-based to cross-functional, agile and lean delivery methods
  • Hard working, result driven team worker, committed to excellence, hands-on attitude, thriving in multi-cultural environments
  • Voracious learner, love to research and reap benefits of new technologies and quickly adopt them to the highest standards
  • Polyglot programmer with total experience >15 years in various roles - starting as Java / JEE Software Engineer to Architect and Product Owner, expert in building applications scalable and API-centric web applications from scratch using frameworks and technologies such as Node.JS / Express / HAPI, Databases incl. Oracle, MySQL, Postgres and MongoDB, Angular, ReactJS, Elixir and Phoenix Framework, DropWizard, Play! Framework, Spring Boot / Spring Cloud and more, delivering many on-premise and software-as-a-service solutions
  • Trained in using Agile Methodologies (Scrum, Kanban, LEAN and Agile Product Management, LeSS)
  • German native speaker, English business speaker, living 7 years in London
  • Speaker at Events – past events included CodeTalks E-Commerce Edition in Berlin, Webinale Berlin and OOP Munich

Work experience

  • August 2017 - now - Head of Technology, Engineering and Product (CTO) at Nowtilus GmbH, Berlin
  • August 2016 - July 2017 - Application Architect at PayU (Part of Naspers Group), Berlin
  • January 2016 - August 2016 - Freelance Full Stack Engineer, several Projects, Berlin
  • July 2015 - December 2015 - Product Owner, Commercetools GmbH, Berlin
  • February 2008 - June 2015 - Architect, Solution Engineer at eCommera Ltd, London
  • September 2006 - February 2008 - Freelance Solution Architect, several Projects, Dresden, Geneva, Boston, Burlington (VT)
  • February 2004 - September 2006 - Software Engineer, Signsoft GmbH, Dresden

Education

  • 1999 - 2001 - Computer Science, Anhalt University of Applied Science, Köthen / Anhalt