Full-Spectrum Software Engineer: From Bare-Metal Optimizations to Serverless Architectures

I'm Leon Winter, a passionate software developer. My enthusiasm for programming began back in 2009, I was nine years old at the time. In Germany, Kellogg's Cornflakes used to come with free computer games. My best friend and I regularly bought those cereal boxes, not for the cornflakes, but for the games. We started collecting them and spent countless afternoons playing them together. One of those games left a lasting impression on me. Before the actual game launched, a small settings window appeared, featuring a background image and several buttons, including one to start the game. We noticed that the number, size, and position of the buttons, as well as the path to the background image, were all read from a .ini configuration file. That sparked our curiosity. We began editing the file, removing unnecessary buttons, changing the background image, and keeping only the start button. And then, we had an idea: to create our very first "computer game. "You might know the children's book series "Where's Waldo?", where the goal is to find the character Waldo in large, busy illustrations. That's exactly the kind of game we wanted to recreate using the simple tools we had. We called our version “Find The Fly.” We drew a tiny fly in Microsoft Paint and hid it in different background images. The technical setup was surprisingly clever: we created a nested folder structure and copied the same executable file, background image, and modified configuration file into each folder. The config file was adjusted so that the invisible start button aligned precisely with the hidden fly in the image. When the player found the fly and clicked on it, the next level, a new window from a subfolder opened, and the previous one closed. This simple afternoon project brought me so much joy that I wanted to learn more about computers and programming languages. What started as a game became my biggest hobby, and eventually, my calling and greatest passion.

But enough about the past. These days, I'm happily married and the proud father of two wonderful children. I love rainy weather, enjoy walking through the woods, and often sit outside in the garden to unwind and take in the peace of nature. When it gets a bit too chilly, I like to relax at the spa, soaking in warm water and enjoying aromatic steam infusions is my idea of perfect relaxation. I'm a proud Star Trek fan, I love cooking, and I have a definite preference for spicy food.

On my now 16-year journey through the world of software and hardware, I've been exposed to a broad technical spectrum. From bootloaders and drivers written in Assembler, to game engines developed in C, all the way to web applications using TypeScript and React. I have a deep understanding of the platforms I develop for and have implemented many data structures and algorithms from scratch in C. This experience allows me not only to use libraries, frameworks, and tools effectively, but also to understand how they work, enabling me to choose the right tool for the job, or, when necessary, develop a custom solution.

Please find some tools and technologies I worked with below:

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  AWS
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  BunnyCDN
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  Heroku
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  NGINX
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  Docker
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  Jenkins
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  Terraform
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  Git
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  GNU Make
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  CMake
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  PostgreSQL
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  MongoDB
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  SQLite
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  C
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  C++
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  C#
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  Java
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  JavaScript
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  TypeScript
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  Python
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  Zig
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  HTML5
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  CSS3
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  Sass
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  Next.js
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  React
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  Javalin
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  Spring Boot
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  Strapi
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  GraphQL
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  Socket.IO
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  JUnit 5
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  Apache Kafka
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  Ghidra
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  Gamebryo
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  Godot
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  Unreal Engine 3
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  Unreal Engine 4
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  Unreal Engine 5
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  Unreal Development Kit
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  raylib
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  SDL2 / SDL3
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  OpenGL
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  OpenCL
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  OpenAL
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  Vulkan
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  WebGL

But it's not just about technical skills: I integrate easily into existing teams and genuinely enjoy working with colleagues. I take pleasure in motivating others and working together toward a common goal. Honesty and loyalty are important to me, and I'm always happy to get involved in social activities and events.

I successfully completed a three-year vocational training program as an IT specialist in application development. During this time, I not only gained in-depth knowledge of software development, but also valuable experience working in teams and on large-scale projects. In particular, the hands-on use of modern technologies and the collaborative solving of complex problems further strengthened my passion for the IT industry. In the future, I aim to deepen and expand my expertise through academic studies and targeted further training in order to continue developing both professionally and personally.

• Phone: +49 1575 0345370
• Email: hello@leon-winter.dev