CURRICULUM VITAE

Jakub “Sandtalker” Kołakowski

Technology Leader, Systems Thinker & Tinkerer

Developer Community Builder | Cloud, AI, Platforms, Infrastructure, Apps, Websites, Hardware

Warsaw, Poland

Mail: j@kol.ski

Contents

Executive Summary

Technology leader, systems strategist, and developer community builder with 20+ years of professional experience across software engineering, cloud, infrastructure, security, digital platforms, product development, embedded systems, and operational leadership.

Co-founder of Kol.ski sp. z o.o. and of Google Developer Group Warsaw, helping build one of the region’s most active developer communities through conferences, workshops, hackathons, livestreams, mentoring, and large-scale technology collaboration.

Combines deep technical expertise with strategic execution across infrastructure architecture, UX, product and program management, scalability, resilience, edge computing, hardware prototyping, and cross-functional leadership.

Consistently an early adopter of new technologies — picking them up while they are still emerging and turning them into practical, working solutions: from AJAX-driven web applications, through Kubernetes and cloud-native platforms, to federated protocols and agentic engineering today. Since 2025, runs engineering operations through AI coding agents with persistent memory, delivering as a single engineer what previously took a team.

Known for quickly understanding complex systems, stabilizing challenging projects, optimizing operations, strengthening security, and aligning engineering, product, infrastructure, UX, and business teams around scalable delivery.

Key Achievements

  • Reduced infrastructure and operational costs by ~80% while simultaneously improving scalability, platform coverage, operational resilience, and security standards
  • Maintained 100% uptime across the vast majority of managed production healthcare and consumer-facing platforms
  • Eliminated recurring security incidents including defaces, malicious injections, spam, and unauthorized content issues for over 6 years through continuous infrastructure modernization and operational hardening
  • Designed and supervised technical environments spanning ~300 Google Cloud Platform projects and ~100 virtual machines across multiple organizations
  • Supported digital platforms used across 60+ healthcare and consumer brands and serving millions monthly users
  • Reorganized and optimized Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, and Google Marketing Platform governance, analytics workflows, operational structures, and tracking ecosystems across approximately 100 Google Analytics properties and around 150 Google Tag Manager environments and Google Ads accounts
  • Led organizations of up to ~35 people — at times through 7 sub-chapter leads — and repeatedly built engineering teams from scratch in startup, agency, and community settings, including negotiating team compensation with clients; day-to-day leadership of a core 4-person technology team plus 30+ contributors
  • Acted as the technology “meta-agency” for a pharmaceutical client: orchestrating multiple agencies and client departments across design, development, QA, and acceptance, with governance and sign-off on the client’s behalf, without formal line authority
  • Designed and operated — as a single engineer working with AI coding agents — an unattended three-stage static publishing pipeline (export, preview, production; smoke tests, Markdown and llms.txt output, client-side search) for ~70 pharma and consumer brand sites on ~100 VMs: 25+ releases in six months, Core Web Vitals from 63/68 to 95–100, First Contentful Paint 2.1 s → 0.9 s, zero-downtime migrations from Docker to native runtimes
  • Built a Go-based fleet control plane (12 workers: inventory sync, host monitoring, notifications, IAM, opt-in night-time auto-stop) for the cloud VM estate, cutting compute hours on opted-in machines by up to ~58%
  • Introduced an agentic operating model for engineering operations: 200+ documented AI-agent work sessions in 2026, persistent agent memory in a knowledge vault, and daily time reporting to Jira generated automatically from agent logs — replacing up to 20 hours a month of manual report reconstruction
  • Led or directly organized approximately 250 technology community events while additionally supporting around 150 more initiatives across workshops, conferences, hackathons, livestreams, and developer-focused activities

Areas of Expertise

  • Technology Leadership & Systems Thinking
  • Cloud Platforms, Infrastructure & APIs
  • Applied AI, Agentic Engineering & Automation
  • Product, Platform & Infrastructure Strategy
  • Platform Engineering, Developer Relations & Developer Experience
  • Security, Cybersecurity & Privacy by Design
  • UX/UI & Human-Centered Design
  • Technical Program & Project Leadership
  • Community Building & Public Speaking
  • Cross-Functional Collaboration & Operational Strategy
  • Edge Computing & Embedded Systems
  • IoT & Physical Computing
  • Hardware Prototyping & Automation
  • Distributed Device Ecosystems

Professional Experience

Kol.ski sp. z o.o. - Co-Founder

2026 - Present

Co-founded Kol.ski, a Warsaw-based technology company that brings together technology, design, automation, and reliable delivery — from discovery, through implementation, to growth and maintenance.

The company continues and extends the consulting practice previously run as J.KOL.SKI, which it took over in 2026.

Focus Areas

Cloud and infrastructure, AI and automation, digital products and platforms, UX/UI, security and privacy, edge computing, IoT and hardware, custom R&D, digital compliance, training, and Design Sprint workshops.

ALBO ALBO - Technology Director

2016 - Present

Leading technology strategy, cloud infrastructure, APIs, digital platforms, and operational architecture for healthcare and large-scale digital products.

Responsible for shaping scalable technical environments for multiple brands, services, and applications while combining infrastructure, automation, analytics, integrations, UX, and business requirements into cohesive operational systems.

Responsible for the company-wide technology stack, including infrastructure, cloud environments, security standards, operational workflows, internal systems, online platforms, and long-term technology evolution.

Selected Responsibilities & Impact

  • Evolving infrastructure and platform architecture across regulated consumer-health brands — OTC medicines, dietary supplements, cosmetics, and medical devices — and consumer-facing platforms
  • Serving as the client’s technology “meta-agency”: orchestrating multiple agencies and client departments across design, development, QA, and acceptance, with governance and sign-off on the client’s behalf
  • Connected packaging and product experiences: centralised QR codes on packs and an interactive 3D packaging viewer (Google Model Viewer) on a brand site; product data and regulatory literature hub for ~270 products and ~420 documents (leaflets, SmPC, API) with LLM-assisted document conversion
  • Supervising cloud infrastructure, APIs, integrations, analytics ecosystems, operational tooling, and distributed environments across production systems
  • Leading infrastructure optimization and governance initiatives across large-scale digital ecosystems
  • Improving operational resilience, scalability, automation, deployment workflows, and security posture while maintaining 100% uptime across the vast majority of managed production platforms
  • Reducing infrastructure and operational costs by approximately 80% while continuously expanding technical complexity, integrations, automation layers, AI-assisted tooling, and platform scale
  • Designing and continuously evolving integrated ecosystems combining Google Cloud Platform, Google Workspace, Google Marketing Platform, Kubernetes, Firebase, VM infrastructure, APIs, analytics, automation workflows, and AI-assisted operational tooling into cohesive and maintainable operational environments
  • Coordinating collaboration across multidisciplinary engineering, UX, infrastructure, analytics, marketing, and business stakeholders, including direct leadership in teams and projects

Technologies & Platforms

Google Cloud Platform, Kubernetes, Firebase, Linux, Go, Python, APIs, automation workflows, analytics ecosystems, AI coding agents and agentic pipelines, CI/CD, infrastructure systems, security workflows, and large-scale web platforms.

Selected Brands

USP Zdrowie, US Pharmacia, Pharmaceris, Reebok, Accenture, Lovela, CCC, and multiple healthcare and consumer brands.

Smart Electric Vehicles Indonesia (SEVI) - CTO

2021 - 2024

Led technology for an early-stage electric vehicle charging network startup based in Jakarta, in a part-time, remote role within a multinational team.

Built and managed the engineering team and owned the company’s full digital product: websites, applications, backend services, and the APIs connecting the charge points. Also established the company-wide technology foundations, including Google Workspace, engineering processes, and source control workflows.

Supported hardware development alongside the software work, including charger prototyping and in-vehicle integration testing.

The long-term target architecture was a decentralized charging network, with charge points communicating peer-to-peer over a private ActivityPub federation rather than solely through a central backend.

J.KOL.SKI (formerly SandGroup) - Founder & Technology Consultant

2009 - 2026

Founded and ran an independent technology and consulting practice (sole proprietorship) focused on digital platforms, infrastructure, web technologies, developer-focused solutions, automation, edge computing, embedded systems, and strategic technical consulting.

Worked across cloud infrastructure, integrations, automation systems, product platforms, UX, operational tooling, distributed device ecosystems, and developer workflows.

Helped companies, startups, and organizations connect technology, infrastructure, operations, and business execution into scalable systems.

The practice was suspended in 2026, when its projects and clients moved to Kol.ski sp. z o.o.

Selected Work

  • Built engineering teams from scratch for client startups and negotiated team compensation with clients
  • Supported infrastructure, automation, platform, and operational initiatives across startups, communities, and digital products
  • Designed and optimized scalable technical environments, integrations, and workflows
  • Combined infrastructure strategy, UX, automation, hardware prototyping, and operational thinking into practical technology solutions

Google Developer Group Warsaw — Co-Founder / Organizer / Community Leader

2011 - Present

Co-created and helped grow one of the region’s most active developer communities through conferences, workshops, livestreams, hackathons, mentoring initiatives, and technology partnerships.

Activities Included

  • DevFest
  • Google I/O Extended
  • Arduino Day
  • workshops and hackathons
  • livestreams and educational initiatives
  • startup and developer mentoring, including Speed Dating by GDG — matching startups with engineers and helping teams form
  • public speaking and community collaboration

Community Scale

  • Core organizing team of up to ~35 volunteers, at times structured through 7 sub-chapter leads — leadership, retention, and hard conversations without the lever of pay
  • Thousands of community members across multiple online and offline community ecosystems
  • Approximately 250 organized technology events and around 150 additional supported initiatives
  • Collaborations with technology partners, communities, sponsors, startups, and global organizations

Focus Areas

Developer Experience, cloud & web technologies, AI workflows, emerging technologies, edge systems, hardware ecosystems, developer education, teach the teachers, and community-driven technical initiatives.

DDB & Tribal Worldwide - Project Manager / Innovation Manager

2014 - 2015

Managed technology-driven campaigns, product launches, and innovation-focused initiatives for global brands and agencies.

Worked across project management, technical consulting, operational coordination, workflow optimization, multidisciplinary delivery environments, and interactive campaigns combining digital experiences, software platforms, and hardware-driven installations.

Selected Brands

McDonald’s, T-Mobile, Mars, Finlandia Vodka, Allegro, PLL LOT, PZU, and Unilever.

Additional Context

Worked on both online and offline campaigns, including interactive and technology-oriented projects combining software, hardware, infrastructure, and operational coordination within multidisciplinary agency environments.

Geo-Com - IT Management Specialist

2013 - 2014

Responsible for agile project coordination, UX-oriented technical leadership, and digital product support for enterprise and B2B technology initiatives.

RadioWWW - CTO

2011 - 2013

Internet radio station started by experienced radio people to compete with the large traditional broadcasters. Recommended as CTO to design and deliver its web stack, while broadcasting and hardware were handled by a separate team.

Led a team working in hackathon mode to build the station’s website, tightly integrated with Portal WWW (text publications), and the technology that kept the stream playing without interruption while listeners moved around the site — at a time when AJAX-driven navigation was still uncommon.

Damned Angels Group / Polish Web Organization - Founder

2003 - 2009

Founded Polish Web Organization in 2003, transformed into Damned Angels Group in 2005 — a “hacker” collective that brought together people from all over Poland, with around 20 members at its peak, which was a lot for those years.

The group built its own security and web-based projects and cooperated with United Crew (security), Revival.pl (hacking), Wyklady.net (live lectures, also over IRC), UW-Team (hacking), and other development-oriented groups. Suspended in fall 2009, when the focus moved to SandGroup (later J.KOL.SKI).

How I Work

  • Systems-first approach to technology and operations
  • Strong focus on scalability, maintainability, operational resilience, and security
  • Comfortable operating across ambiguity and multidisciplinary environments
  • Bridging engineering, UX, infrastructure, operations, and business stakeholders
  • Combining strategic thinking with hands-on execution
  • Rapidly understanding and stabilizing complex operational systems

Community & Public Speaking

Over the years, participated in and organized conferences, hackathons, livestreams, workshops, mentoring programs, startup initiatives, and educational events.

Collaborated with developers, startups, product teams, community organizers, agencies, and global technology companies to help grow local and international technology communities.

Speaker and organizer at initiatives related to cloud platforms, web technologies, AI, digital products, infrastructure, developer communities, operational workflows, emerging technologies, and edge computing ecosystems.

Selected Technologies

Cloud & Infrastructure

Google Cloud Platform, Kubernetes, Firebase, Linux, CI/CD, infrastructure automation, system administration, cloud operations, VM environments, networking, operational tooling, security workflows.

Development & Platforms

JavaScript, APIs, WordPress ecosystems, web platforms, integrations, automation systems, analytics tooling, full-stack web environments.

AI Engineering

LLM APIs (Anthropic, OpenAI), agentic workflows and multi-agent pipelines, Model Context Protocol (MCP), retrieval over Markdown knowledge bases, testing and guardrails for agent workflows, AI-assisted development (Claude Code, Codex CLI, GitHub Copilot), local speech and language models (Whisper, local LLMs).

Hardware, Edge & Embedded

  • Raspberry Pi ecosystem
  • Arduino & microcontrollers
  • IoT prototyping
  • Edge computing systems
  • Device automation
  • Sensor integrations
  • Audio/video streaming systems
  • Physical infrastructure monitoring
  • Embedded Linux environments
  • Low-power distributed devices
  • Networking & resilient communication systems

Technology Background

Hands-on experience with computers, infrastructure, networking, embedded systems, and internet technologies since the mid-1990s shaped a systems-level understanding that later evolved into cloud platforms, AI workflows, infrastructure strategy, edge computing, and large-scale technical operations.

Additional Information

  • Open to international collaboration and global opportunities
  • Experience working across startups, agencies, communities, and enterprise-scale technical environments
  • Comfortable operating across technical, strategic, infrastructure, product, and operational roles

J.KOL.SKI

EOT