Hello, world.

Iliyas Akbergen

Software Engineer

Backend engineer with 8+ years building reliable APIs and modular systems for high-load products across healthcare, finance, iGaming, telecom, and education. Focused on Clean Architecture, DDD, CQRS, and automated testing.

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01. About me

I'm a backend-focused Software Engineer based in Prague, Czechia, with 8+ years of hands-on experience building scalable APIs, distributed systems, and modular architectures for products serving thousands of users.

My engineering philosophy revolves around Clean Architecture, Domain-Driven Design (DDD), and CQRS. I care deeply about code quality, automated testing (unit / integration / E2E / behavioral), and pragmatic modernisation of legacy systems — without disrupting business.

I've built event-driven pipelines with Kafka and RabbitMQ, real-time features over WebSocket/Centrifugo, OAuth 2.0 authorization servers, KYC microservices, and solo-shipped a trading-platform backend.

Currently working at Accolade (healthcare, Prague).

8+
Years of professional experience
5
Industries (healthcare, fintech, iGaming, telecom, edtech)

02. Skills

Languages
TypeScript PHP Node.js SQL JavaScript Golang Java
Frameworks
NestJS Symfony Laravel Express.js Lumen CodeIgniter Vue.js React
Architecture
DDD Clean Arch CQRS Microservices REST WebSocket SOLID
Messaging
Kafka RabbitMQ MQTT BullMQ Redis
Storages
PostgreSQL MySQL Redis MongoDB Amazon S3
Testing
Jest PHPUnit Behat Playwright supertest TDD
Infrastructure
Docker Docker Compose GitLab CI/CD Swagger Migrations
Practices
OOP IoC/DI Git-flow Code Review Refactoring Observability

03. Experience

Accolade · Prague, Czechia · Healthcare Nov 2023 – Present
Software Engineer III
2nd.md
PHP CodeIgniter Symfony DI OAuth 2.0 TDD DDD SNS / SQS DynamoDB S3 Secrets Manager CloudFormation Jenkins
  • Modernizing a large legacy PHP/CodeIgniter monolith while keeping business operations uninterrupted.
  • Proposed, designed, and independently integrated Symfony's DependencyInjection component into the legacy codebase, improving modularity and testability without a full rewrite.
  • Developed an OAuth 2.0 authorization server supporting Authorization Code Flow and MFA.
  • Replaced cron-based workflows with a queue-driven processing system, improving throughput and operational stability.
  • Delivers features using DDD, Clean Architecture, and TDD with unit / integration / behavioral tests.
  • Designed a message bus initially backed by a DBAL database table; after stabilisation migrated high-throughput flows to AWS SNS + SQS, keeping the DB transport only for long-delay messages.
  • Ongoing maintenance of deployment and infrastructure via Jenkins pipelines and CloudFormation templates — environment provisioning, stack updates, and release automation.
  • Integrated AWS S3 for file storage and Secrets Manager for secret injection at deploy time, eliminating plaintext credentials from config.
  • Integrated with existing DynamoDB table used to cache LaunchDarkly feature-flag evaluations, reading flag state from it to reduce latency and external API calls.
Binary Options Trading Platform · Freelance · FinTech Jul 2025 – Present
Senior Backend Engineer (Solo)
NestJS 11 TypeScript 5.8 PostgreSQL Redis S3 Centrifugo JWT
  • Architected and delivered a complete trading platform backend from scratch using Clean Architecture with CQRS/DDD patterns.
  • Built production-ready infrastructure: Docker, rate limiting, CORS, Helmet, structured logging, and Swagger docs.
Aventus IT · Remote · FinTech Jan 2024 – Jul 2025
Backend Engineer
Symfony RabbitMQ PostgreSQL Behat
  • Designed and implemented a standalone KYC microservice alongside an existing Symfony monolith — integrating mobile ID providers and automating identity checks in the loan decision flow.
  • Introduced asynchronous communication via RabbitMQ between services and the monolith.
  • Wrote unit / integration tests with PHPUnit and Behat for legacy PHP code.
  • Contributed to migrating parts of the monolith into separate services, reducing coupling incrementally.
Slotegrator · Prague, Czechia · iGaming Feb 2022 – Jan 2024
Backend Engineer
Slotegrator Casino Bot
NestJS Express.js TypeScript Kafka RabbitMQ BullMQ Playwright Golang
  • Took part in development and maintenance of high-traffic services including Telegram casino bot, mass messaging platform, OAuth social auth, and affiliate systems.
  • Extracted shared business logic into internal PHP libraries for Symfony and Laravel apps with automated GitLab CI/CD publishing to private composer packages registry.
  • Integrated Kafka, RabbitMQ, MQTT, and BullMQ/Redis queues; established a WebSocket server.
  • Created E2E test suite with Playwright; collaborated with Golang team on async data aggregator.
KazakhTelecom · Astana, Kazakhstan · Telecom Nov 2021 – Feb 2022
Backend Engineer
telecom.kz
PHP Laravel Vue.js Lumen PHPUnit Docker
  • Maintained and extended a Vue + Laravel monolith + Lumen microservices stack for billing and customer management.
  • Added REST endpoints with authentication, authorization, and request validation; improved test coverage.
  • Containerized services with Docker and improved local development workflow.
BilimLand · Astana, Kazakhstan · EdTech Dec 2020 – Nov 2021
PHP Developer
onlinemektep.kz
Laravel MySQL PHPUnit
  • Maintained and developed features in a high-traffic Laravel web application (onlinemektep.kz).
  • Implemented stored procedures for periodic data aggregation to support analytics; expanded admin panel.
Small & Skiff · Almaty, Kazakhstan · Retail Nov 2019 – Dec 2020
Full Stack Engineer
React Laravel Socket.IO Pusher Java (Android)
  • Built SPA features using React and Laravel; implemented server-sent events with Laravel Broadcasting and Socket.IO.
  • Maintained an Android (Java) application for a barcode-scanner device used by store employees.
Centras Insurance · Almaty, Kazakhstan · Insurance Sep 2018 – Nov 2019
Junior PHP Developer
kupipolis.kz
PHP Yii 2 Laravel
  • Refactored and rebuilt an insurance sales application from Yii 2 to Laravel.
  • Contributed to web feature development across the platform.

04. Projects

📒

AddressBook API — Demo Project

Live demo REST API for an address book application backed by Firebase Firestore. Supports user registration and JWT-based authentication, contact management, and a health check endpoint. Fully documented with OpenAPI 3.0 / Swagger UI at api.addressbook.akbergen.info/docs.

Node.js TypeScript Firebase Firestore JWT REST OpenAPI 3.0
🏦

Loan Decision — PHP

Loan application system built with Symfony, demonstrating DDD, TDD, and Clean Architecture. Applies configurable eligibility rules (credit score, income, age, US state) and emits loan notifications via pluggable Email/SMS drivers — showcasing the Strategy and Observer patterns. Covered with PHPUnit unit & integration tests; static analysis via PHPStan. Same app as the NestJS version below, implemented in PHP.

PHP Symfony DDD Clean Arch TDD PHPUnit PHPStan Docker
🏦

Loan Decision — NestJS

The same loan application system as the PHP version above, re-implemented in NestJS/TypeScript. Built with the same DDD, TDD, and Clean Architecture principles — manages clients and products, evaluates credit eligibility via a rule-based decision engine, and handles the full loan lifecycle, backed by PostgreSQL via TypeORM and covered with Jest unit & e2e tests.

NestJS TypeScript PostgreSQL TypeORM DDD Clean Arch TDD Jest Docker
📰

Articles REST API

NestJS REST API featuring JWT-based authentication, full CRUD for articles (title, description, publication date, author), pagination, filtering, and Redis-backed caching with automatic cache invalidation on writes. Includes OpenAPI / Swagger docs, database migrations via TypeORM, and unit tests.

NestJS TypeScript PostgreSQL TypeORM Redis JWT Swagger Docker
🗞️

News Aggregator API

Laravel REST API that automatically fetches and stores articles from external news sources (NewsAPI) via a scheduled cron job running every minute. Exposes authenticated endpoints for browsing aggregated articles, documented with Swagger UI. Includes PHPUnit tests and PHPStan static analysis enforced on every push via GitHub Actions.

PHP Laravel MySQL Sanctum Swagger PHPUnit PHPStan Docker
🧮

Price Counter

Laravel + Vue.js application that calculates the final price of goods including country-specific VAT rates. Implements a clean domain layer with TDD (PHPUnit) for the pricing use case, a REST API endpoint for programmatic access, and a simple front-end UI — showcasing full-stack integration with domain-driven business logic at its core.

PHP Laravel Vue.js TDD PHPUnit REST Docker

05. Education & Certifications

Education
Bachelor in Information Systems
International IT University
Almaty, Kazakhstan
Sep 2015 – Jun 2019
Certificate
Design Patterns / Refactoring
refactoring.guru
March 2022

06. Get in touch

Open to interesting backend or architecture challenges. Feel free to reach out via any of the channels below.

iliyas@akbergen.info github.com/ilyasakbergen linkedin.com/in/akbergen @yaniskegelbar +420 771 286 627