Lead Engineer at bol · Amsterdam

Building platforms & happy little apps.

Hi, I'm Bogdan — a full-stack engineer with almost 20 years in software. I maintain the Backstage Scaffolder for the CNCF, write as a DZone Core member, and ship products that help people learn and code a little better.

See what I've built GitHub LinkedIn

CNCF maintainerBackstage Scaffolder

86.5K readsDZone Core

5 certificationsKubernetes · AWS · Java

drag to spin · click a planet

01 — products

Little worlds I've shipped.

Tools for AI agents and apps that make learning stick. Hover a card — they're a bit three-dimensional.

✓7 rules matched

Open source · Go

Nexora

One knowledge layer for every AI coding agent. Rules, skills and decisions live in one Git repo; each agent gets exactly what applies to the files it's changing — and required rules never get ranked away.

Read the docs

Designing Data-Intensive Apps3 / 12

Which quorum property keeps reads fresh?ch. 9 · p 331 · auto-flips

w + r > n — every read overlaps an up-to-date write.from the passage

AgainHardGood

12day streak

Live

Knowback

Turn books and course material into flashcard decks. Every question shows the passage it came from, so you can fix a card before it lands in your library. Short daily sessions, streaks, visible progress.

Visit knowback.nl

The Remains of the Day№ 0002

to bear in mind

One must always bear in mind that a guest's comfort depends on a hundred small things.

AgainKnow itPin this week

EN+ NL words

Try it now

Lexgrove

Words from the books you read, learned until you use them. Collect a word, review it for a few minutes a day, then pin it to actually say it this week.

Open lex-grove.com

02 — open source

Backstage, in the open.

Backstage is the CNCF framework for building developer portals. I help maintain it — and build tools around it.

CNCF · Maintainer

Backstage Scaffolder

Project Area Maintainer since October 2023 — reviewing pull requests, triaging issues and shaping how teams create new software from templates.

backstage/backstage

DZone Core member

86.5K^reads

Across 10 articles on platform engineering, Backstage and frontend architecture.

My DZone profile Community plugin

Pointing Poker

My official Backstage plugin: your team, your Jira tickets and estimation voting on one screen.

Tool

Backstage Radar

One page instead of hundreds of notifications: who's waiting on you, and for how long.

Certified

5 certs

Kubernetes · AWS · Java Hover to flip ↻

CKSKubernetes Security SpecialistLinux Foundation · 2022

CKAKubernetes AdministratorLinux Foundation · 2021

AWSSolutions Architect – AssociateAmazon Web Services · 2021

AWSDeveloper – AssociateAmazon Web Services · 2020

OCPJava SE 11 DeveloperOracle · 2020

03 — writing

Notes from the field.

All articles

Serverless Sign-In Solution Based on Next.js on CloudflareDZoneMar 2025 Make Your Backstage Templates ResilientDZoneJan 2024 Creating a Frontend Architecture With Dynamic PluginsDZoneFrontend How to Build a Chat App With Spring Boot and DynamoDBDZoneBackend Scale Your Frontend ApplicationDZoneFrontend How to Effectively Maintain CSS in a Large ApplicationDZoneFrontend

Also on dev.to: why we moved our Backstage platform from Yarn to pnpm, and how to stop copy-pasting rules between coding agents.

~20 yrs Java · JS · Go Team lead & mentor Amsterdam

04 — about

Hi, I'm Bogdan.

I'm a Lead Engineer at bol in the Netherlands, working on developer platforms with Backstage, Kubernetes and CI/CD. Over the years I've led teams, coached colleagues, run code reviews and mob sessions, and helped shape architecture and hiring.

Outside of work I build things I wish existed — tools that help people learn, and helpers that give AI agents the right context.

Stay curious Make it useful Keep improving Share what I learn

Let's build something delightful.

Platforms, Backstage, AI tooling, or an idea that won't leave you alone — I'd love to hear about it.

Say hi on LinkedIn GitHub DZone