Casper Tiedemann

TECHNICAL LEAD

A passionate engineer, adept problem solver, and lover of all things technology, with an insatiable drive to create highly polished products and delightful user experiences.

A firm believer in inspirational leadership, establishing clear vision, and building open and friendly culture, where teams feel empowered and inspired, which ultimately leads to innovation and excellence.

LEADERSHIP

  • Solution Architecture
  • Requirements Analysis
  • Problem Solving
  • Process Optimisation
  • Team Building
  • Developing Culture

METHODOLOGIES

  • Agile Development
  • Micro-Frontend & Microservices
  • Architectural Decision Records
  • Test Automation
  • CI/CD
  • Observability and Monitoring

TECHNOLOGIES

  • React, NextJS, Module Federation
  • Jest, Testing Library, Playwright
  • REST, GraphQL, gRPC, WebSockets
  • DynamoDB (Single Table), Redis, S3
  • AWS CDK, Cloudformation, Terraform
  • DataDog, CloudWatch, OpenTelemetry

EXPERIENCE

Technical Lead

Feb 2022 - Current

Prezzee | Sydney, Australia

  • In the first 6 months at Prezzee modernised and improved the frontend architecture addressing the needs of the rapidly growing team and supporting the increasing scale of the product. Composed a multi application monorepo (Turborepo, pnpm) optimising CI/CD and local development. Developed a micro-frontend meta framework (Webpack Module Federation) enabling decoupled lower risk deployments. Implemented BFF pattern (GraphQL Apollo) to orchestrate the growing number of micro-services. Founded a new design system component library (React, Chakra UI).
  • Over 6 months lead an agile squad to migrate an existing application to a modern stack, while addressing key UX and performance issues. Increased order throughput 20x from 2 to 40 transactions per second, reduced costs resulting from customer support, and improved ongoing maintainability of the product.
  • Won prize for best business potential at Prezzee hackathon for a working prototype of a peer to peer recognition and rewarding SaaS product that integrates with Slack and the Prezzee platform. Presented the product to the board, and was endorsed to develop the product further. Built the MVP SaaS product from the ground up with a small team, live internally within 3 months and external pilot phase after 6 months. Built using serverless event driven architecture, using AWS Lambda (Node.js + TypeScript), DynamoDB (Single Table Design), S3, API Gateway, Cognito, SQS and CDK for IaC.
  • Upskilled the wider team on best practices, including testing, CI/CD, feature flags, observability, knowledge sharing through architectural decision records and improving documentation.
  • 40% hands on coding and architecting solutions, 20% engaging with business and stakeholders, 40% managing and mentoring 4 talented engineers, with 1:1s, pair programming, code review, and performance reviews.

Technical Director

Aug 2021 - Jan 2022

Deltatre | Sydney, Australia

  • Establishing overall product technical direction for the mtribes SaaS platform, driving key decisions around platform architecture, data modelling and technology adoption.
  • Adapting the mtribes platform to meet the requirements of internal and external stakeholders through collaboration with product owners to establish product roadmap.
  • Mentoring and managing team leads across 3 disciplines in the engineering team, frontend UI, mobile and QA, with weekly 1:1 catch ups and regular performance reviews.
  • Hiring and onboarding new talent in the engineering team.

UI Architect & Team Lead

Jan 2019 - Aug 2021

Deltatre | Sydney, Australia

  • Leading all frontend developers across 3 agile squads, hiring new talent, and simultaneously driving architectural decisions for the web apps behind mtribes.com and the micro-services which make up the mtribes SaaS platform.
  • Established FIRE (Frontend Ideas Research & Experimentation), weekly time set aside for every member of the frontend team to work on their own independent projects. This drove innovation in the product, and increased team engagement.
  • Promoted a culture of knowledge sharing through fortnightly team code share meetups.
  • Mentoring team members through code review, weekly 1:1 catch ups, and regular performance reviews.
  • Implemented a modular micro-frontend architecture using Webpack Module Federation, with GraphQL Apollo for data fetching and application state. Benefits of this approach include rapid development time, optimisted application performance, streamlined deployments, and an enjoyable developer experience.
  • Instigated development of client orchestration layer (Node.js, GraphQL, gRPC), optimising and simplifying communication between frontend clients, and backend micro-services.

Senior Software Engineer

Sep 2016 - Jan 2019

Massive Interactive (acquired by Deltatre) | Sydney, Australia

  • Acting as the most senior frontend developer within autonomous agile squad, up to 40% of time spent reviewing and mentoring.
  • Developed a responsive VOD web CMS, allowing operators to ingest and manage content for their VOD service. Quickly learned and leveraged cutting edge tools and technologies (at the time) - React, Flux, Webpack, ES6, LESS.
  • Built high performance image upload service (GoLang), writing uploaded images to S3 bucket.
  • Developed unbranded Video On Demand (VOD) single page web app (React, Redux, Typescript). Serves as a skin-able, customisable and best practice reference implementation for in house service teams to build upon and customise for external clients.
  • Built VOD application orchestration layer (Node.js, Express, REST, Swagger) to streamline communication between cross platform client applications (Web, iOS, Android) and monolithic back-end system.

UI Engineer

Jul 2014 - Sep 2016

Massive Interactive (acquired by Deltatre) | Sydney, Australia

  • Refactored and optimised legacy cross platform frontend VOD application.
  • Integrated Chromecast capabilities within the existing product (JavaScript) allowing end users to stream video content to TV from their Desktop or Mobile device.
  • Implemented analytics tracking into the product using Google Analytics (JavaScript), enabling clients to enhance their E-Commerce tracking within VOD services.

Mobile App Developer / Game Developer

Dec 2011 - Dec 2013

Bubblegum Interactive | Sydney, Australia

  • Engineered in-house cross platform game development framework (HaXe, Objective C, Java), enabling rapid 2d game development for both desktop and mobile platforms.
  • Sole programmer of Bubblegum's flagship mobile game Jetpack Jinx.
  • Rapidly developed the Space Heroes Pocket Toons application for Android and iOS meeting a one week deadline. Using native Android Java SDK and iOS SDK using Objective C.
  • Solely developed 8 single and multiplayer web games over the course of 6 months.

Co-Founder & Sole Developer

Jan 2004 - Dec 2018

Vile Media LLC

  • Developed and independently published 15 web games and 2 mobile apps, with our more popular titles reaching millions of unique plays.
  • Monetised apps through advertising partnerships with Newgrounds, Armor Games and Kongregate, as well as in-app purchases.

Flash Application Developer

Jan 2006 - Jan 2009

Contractor

  • While studying at university, developed educational interactive applications (Flash, AS3, e-learning) for use during employee induction at BCF, Supercheap Auto Group and Goldcross Cycles.

EDUCATION

Bachelor of Computer Science (Dean's Scholar)

Feb 2008 - Dec 2011

University of Wollongong (with Distinction)

  • Majoring in Software Engineering & Multimedia and Game Development.
  • Received scholarship for exchange semester at Aarhus University Denmark, in July 2010.

Higher School Certificate

Jan 2005 - Dec 2007

Albury High School (92/100 UAI)

  • VP of Student Representative Council.

References available on request.