Sebastian Engel-Wolf

Sebastian Engel-Wolf

Full-Stack Developer / Founder

I build complex web applications to advance
data-driven problem-solving

Lacking skills like fluent French, Vue.js and patience I made my way becoming a software developer and founder. My favorite work lies in the intersection between Front End and Back end while keeping a good mood in the teams, managing communication and ensuring plenty of exchange.

Currently, I’m a team lead at Censhare. I contribute to a platform managing digital assets of everykind with customers in all fields of publishing, e-commerce and large customer goods. Thereby I am ensuring that the Front End’s needs are represented in our APIs. My second focus is the automatic testing and deployment of all our apps and Back End packages.

Previously, I had the privilege of building an E-Commerce returns platform, software for medical diagnostics and being a speaker at diverse conferences on the topic of reproducibility in Open Source Software.

In my spare time, I’m usually at the playground with my two daughters or hiking up a mountain, often with one of them on my back. When I’m not outdoors, you’ll find me wearing headphones, listening to UK Jazz—especially from the TruThoughts label.

Experience

10.2025 – now

Team Lead

Censhare - PIM, CMS, DAM DEVELOPMENT

Censhare is a company that specializes in developing an advanced content management and digital experience platform. The Censhare platform provides a user-friendly interface for managing digital assets, marketing content.

As a team lead, I am responsible for guiding a team of six developers, one Product Owner (PO), and two Quality Assurance (QA) specialists. The whole team has a multi-national background from 7 nations across the globe. I support the team in all aspects of platform development, from planning and implementation to testing and delivery. My main focus is delivering AI features for content creation, content search and syndication together with the team. Thereby I am coach, mentor, developer and process owner at the same time.

Java
Jira
Docker
Angular
Jenkins
08.2023 – 09.2025

CTO

functionHR GmbH - HR Dashboard, Self Service HR Software

FunctionHR is a company that specializes in the development of a self-service HR platform. The platform is designed to provide a user-friendly interface for HR processes and utilizes technologies such as R-Shiny, React, HTML, Javascript and ReactJS. Within this framework, a comprehensive HR dashboard was implemented that presents key HR performance indicators.

As the CTO, I manage a team of 12 developers, provide support in all areas of platform development. The self-service tool allows the creation of surveys. The HR dashboard contains key metrics to assess organizational health and performance, including:

  • Employee satisfaction: measuring employee satisfaction through surveys and feedback mechanisms.
  • Turnover rate: Monitoring the rate of employee turnover within the organization.
  • Recruitment efficiency: Evaluation of the effectiveness of the recruitment process
React
R
Docker
NodeJS
GitlabCI
R-Shiny
07.2020 – 04.2024

Co-Founder / CTO

Keepoala GmbH - WebApps + Native Apps + Cloud

Keepoala is the first app that tries to avoid returns in two ways. Customers who avoid returns are rewarded via a loyalty program. A returns portal is used to ask customers why they have returned items. These insights are merged with various data connections of the online stores in one system. On a dashboard, the store can then see why returns occur and can use a wide range of adjustments to avoid this.

Technically, Keepoala consists of 16 pieces of software, including an iOS and an Android app, several WebApps in ReactJS that run in AWS ECS and AWS EC2 systems, R-Shiny apps for data analysis and NodeJS backends for connecting various logistics companies.

B2B customers include happybrush, VRESH, steinehelden.de and others.

React
React Native
Gitlab CI-CD
Google Firebase
AWS ECS
01.2021 – 07.2021

Scientific Software Developer

Roche Diagnostics Mannheim - Measurement Visualization

At Roche Diagnostics GmbH Mannheim, a leading company in the field of healthcare and diagnostics, I played a key role in a major project. The company specializes in the development of innovative diagnostic solutions. In my position, I contributed to the development of a tool to facilitate the creation of a new diagnostic method.

The tool I developed enabled the efficient collection and visualization of measurement data, which significantly accelerated the development process of the diagnostic method. The project relied on agile methods, using SCRUM for project management and tools such as Confluence and JIRA for collaboration and tracking.

In terms of software development, technologies such as R-Shiny, Jenkins and AWS EC2 were used, demonstrating a commitment to cutting-edge solutions. The database infrastructure was supported by MongoDB to ensure a robust and scalable storage solution for the project.

R
R-Shiny
MongoDB

Projects

Keepoala

Keepoala

Keepoala is the green loyalty program that allows customers to collect points for not returning whatever they buy online. The IT infrastructure is kind of complex and includes

  • Phone App for iOS and Android: React Native, Firebase Auth, Firebase FireStore
  • WebApp: React, FirebaseFirestore, AWS ECS + AWS ECR
  • Dashboard: R-Shiny, AWS PostGres
  • Shopify Plugin: React, NextJS, Firebase FireStore, Firebase Cloudfunctions
  • Shopware Pluigin: PHP
  • Shopware 6 Plugin: React, NextJS,Firebase Cloudfunctions
  • WooCommerce Plugin: PHP
  • PlentyMarkets Plugin: PHP
  • Billbee Connector: FirebaseCloudfunctions, React, AWS ECS + AWS ECR
  • additional Shop systems: LightSpeed, SalesForce CommerceCloud, Squarespace, Magento 2, OXID eSales
React
ReactNative
AWS
Firebase
NodeJS
bioWARP

bioWARP

bioWARP is an R shiny app used to analyze clinical trials at Roche Diagnostics. It is also used in maintenance and production processes. We called it the largest shiny app in the world as it consists of >500.000 lines of code. More to be found in my presentation: https://zappingseb.github.io/RPharma2018/

Webinar with Posit (RStudio): https://resources.rstudio.com/webinars/the-role-of-r-in-drug-discovery-research-and-development

Read more: blog entry

R
R-shiny
Selenium
docker
Jenkins
RHEL7-server
CSS
3D GPS data animation

3D GPS data animation

Using the amazing package rayshader I wanted to render a video of my tour to Alpe d’Huez. Now you can watch a beautiful 3D Video following my tour up the 21 hairpins.

R
Copernicus
ffmpeg
OpenGL
Strava-Chaser

Strava-Chaser

Stravachaser allows visualizing Strava segment data from different cities. Through this data it is possible to see in which city there are the fastest cyclists. The project made it into the official shiny gallery as an example for Government Public Sector data.

R
R-shiny
curl
Selenium
CSS

Skills

R + R-Shiny

10 / 10
shinyproxy, tidyverse, roxygen

Winner of the R-Shiny Contest 2021
One App in the official shiny gallery (City Cycle Race)
>5 years of experience

Projects:

  • bioWARP, Roche employee, largets shiny app in the world
  • Roche Pharma AG – NEST/TEAL R-Shiny Reporting Framework
  • functionHR – HR Dashboard, Self Service HR Software
  • Roche Diagnostics – Measurement Visualization

Web Development

10 / 10
HTML, CSS, Javascript, ReactJS, NodeJS, ReactNative

Web developer since the age of 13
founder of a E-Commerce start-up using only web technologies
>20 years of experience

Projects:

  • Keepoala – WebApps + Native App Android + iOS
  • functionHR – HR Dashboard, Self Service HR Software
  • kitagluehwuermchen.de naju-thueringen.de Web-Support

CI/CD

9 / 10
GitlabCI, Github Actions, Jenkins, Docker, YAML

Development of R-package + R-Shiny release build pipelines for several project.Code coverage + documentation testing
Fully automated native App release for Keepoala Apps
Fully automated WebApp deployment on AWS ECS with AzureAD / Firebase authentication
>5 years of experience

Projects:

Project Lead

8 / 10
SCRUM, Kanban, Agile, OKR

As a Lead developer in certain projects I was applying the Scrum way of working. As a Co-Founder of Keepoala I introduced the process for our whole development pipeline and was leading a team of 10 developers. At functionHR I am a lead developer in the backend team and responsible for the OKR Process in the IT Team.
>5 years of experience

Projects:

Database SQL/noSQL

8 / 10
MongoDB, SQL, Firestore

SQL developer since the age of 13
MongoDB usage in multiple customer projects
>22 years of experience

Projects:

  • Insilico Biotechnology – employee, Consultant in biotechnological production – (OracleDB)
  • bioWARP, Roche employee, largets shiny app in the world (Oracle DB, PostGresQL)
  • functionHR – HR Dashboard, Self Service HR Software – (MongDB)
  • Roche Diagnostics – Measurement Visualization – (MongDB)
  • Keepoala – WebApps + Native Apps – (FireStore)

Data Science

8 / 10
Python, Data visualization, Data cleaning, REST-API, XML, JSON, CSV

Data Scientist by heart
Data Science was the key to becoming a good Bioinformatician. During my studies I started cleaning huge microarray datasets, visualizing them with MATLAB, R and Python. All skills were needed during my projects and jobs.
>10 years of experience

Projects:

  • Insilico Biotechnology – employee, Consultant in biotechnological production
  • bioWARP, Roche employee, largets shiny app in the world
  • Roche datascience challenge – Roche employee – 3rd price
  • Roche Diagnostics – self employed – Measurement Visualization
  • Flixbus, working student data science and controlling