Name: Mate Nakić Role: Software Engineer Born: 1998 in Zadar, Croatia Current city: Zadar, Croatia

Web-focused software developer with a strong foundation in both development and infrastructure—embodying the true definition of DevOps.

Self-taught with seven years of experience (ages 13-20) in mastering the fundamentals of web application development. Experienced in shifting perspectives and methodologies across backend, frontend, and infrastructure, with a clear preference and passion for backend work.

Advocates for the use of libraries over frameworks, and has hands-on experience with technologies such as Laravel, Vue, React ❤️, and Pulumi ❤️.

• Adheres strictly to a single API style.
• Highly detail-oriented with a focus on "pixel-perfect" UI; recognizes the risks of unsupervised UI development.
• Writes comprehensive automated tests and maintains a "trust but verify" philosophy.
• Prone to overengineering but disciplined in avoiding it through self-regulation.
• Employs smaller, signed commits and frequent pushes; values CI efficiency over manual labor.
• Capable of low-level thinking but excels at implementing high-level abstractions.
• Follows a mobile-first approach in UI design.
• Ensures automated dependency updates, leaving no component outdated.
• Successfully navigated imposter syndrome on two occasions.
• Favors cloud-agnostic, standardized, portable, Kubernetes-native tools over proprietary cloud solutions (but avoids hosting production databases in Kubernetes).
• Designs infrastructure to be ephemeral, supporting destruction and recreation at any time.
• Advocates for local/remote development containers to avoid polluting host machines.
• No direct experience in performance profiling, but eager to learn and develop these skills further.

⚠️ Important
Projects built with Laravel and React are currently running in production.
Features are accessible only behind a login page, with the codebase being closed source.
A demo and codebase walkthrough are available exclusively during job interviews.

A central hub for all my infrastructure needs.
Hosts my Kubernetes cluster and deploys containerized applications.
Manages DNS configuration and SSL certificates for multiple domains.
Utilizes Pulumi TypeScript for a declarative Infrastructure-as-Code approach.
CI pipeline validates and deploys changes on push to main, runs previews for pull requests.
Codebase formatting and linting is enforced with Prettier and ESLint.

Short for container image binaries.
When you build container images and pull other (public) software (mostly binaries, but not limited to them) using the COPY command, you are actually downloading a lot more bytes than you need.
The Cinaries project removes this problem.
You get faster builds, smaller bills, and we all enjoy a minimal carbon footprint.
The project is in its inception phase.

Utility library for color accessibility

Palettar is a versatile library designed to generate border and text colors based on background colors in compliance with WCAG guidelines. It fully supports JavaScript and TypeScript and is tailored for CSS-in-JS solutions, though it is not limited to this use case.

The core package establishes a set of standards and contracts that other packages follow, providing adapters for popular color manipulation libraries within the NPM ecosystem. This approach enables users to select their preferred color generation tools rather than conforming to specific personal opinions.

As a personal initiative, this project focuses on developing, maintaining, and publishing modular libraries organized efficiently in a mono-repository format. It emphasizes flexibility, accessibility, and adaptability for a wide range of developers.

A smart box that opens only for students and logs activity to a web app. This project had practical applications at the faculty, such as allowing students to relax with a PlayStation in the faculty café while safeguarding property (e.g., controllers). If controllers went missing, the last user would be held responsible.

I was responsible for wiring components like a relay, NFC reader, and electronic lock to an ESP32 board. The chip firmware can be found here. The activity log application is a simple Laravel and Vue application deployed with Pulumi to a DigitalOcean managed Kubernetes cluster. The source code is available here.

A Laravel application for exchanging materials between teachers and students. Developed as a final exam project in high school.

A jQuery plugin for custom scrollbars, created for educational purposes.

One of my very first web projects.
It clearly demonstrates that I learned the fundamentals before diving into the library and framework ecosystem.
I use it during job interviews to discuss what's wrong with the code.
No matter where you pause, there's always room for improvement.

• ✅ Robert C. Martin: Clean Code
• ✅ Kent Beck: Test Driven Development
• ⌛ Martin Kleppmann: Designing Data-Intensive Applications
• 🔜 Eric Evans: Domain-Driven Design

• Event Sourcing and Event-Driven Applications
• Software Architecture
• Google Cloud
• Microservices and High Availability

• High School: Web Design at the Natural Sciences and Graphics School in Zadar, Croatia
• Bachelor's Degree: Information Systems at the Faculty of Organization and Informatics in Varaždin, Croatia

• Infrastructure: Kubernetes / Containers
• Backend: PHP
• Frontend: React