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About

About Ratko Solar

Hey, I'm Ratko 👋 a Full-Stack Developer with 13+ years of building things that look great and hold up at scale.

I started out doing design and animation in Adobe Flash (yes, I'm that old), but I've always had a knack for UX that looks and feels nice, so I quickly moved into frontend. Over the years I've worked with a ton of different technologies and drifted further and further into backend and DevOps, where I now spend most of my time designing and building complex microservice systems.

I know calling yourself full-stack is a cliché, but I honestly can't pick a side. Some days it's crafting a beautiful UI, other days it's architecting a complex system where every piece has its place, and I love both.

Outside of work you'll find me:

  • 🏋️ Powerlifting
  • 🍳 Cooking delicious food
  • ⛺ Camping in nature
  • 🎮 Playing video games
Ratko Solar holding his cat Cile
Me and my cat Cile

Expertise

What I do

Frontend & UI/UX

Websites, web apps, mobile apps, I've built them all. I care as much about the design and user experience as the code, and I love making things that look, feel and perform great. Over the years I've worked on everything from company websites to web and mobile apps across many different industries.

Backend & cloud

I've been building backend applications for over a decade, with different technologies and on several cloud providers. From a small service that does one thing to a payment microservice architecture that scales, I've done it before. I like systems that are clean on the inside, well tested and easy to run, so they keep working long after launch day.

Search engine optimization

I'm very detail-oriented, so on every site I build I spend a lot of time fine-tuning content, accessibility and performance. AI tools have also made proper SEO easier than ever, both for researching keywords and competitors and for actually making the changes.

Toolbox

Technologies I've worked with

Frontend

28
  • React
  • TypeScript
  • JavaScript
  • React Native
  • Angular
  • Astro
  • Next.js
  • Gatsby
  • Vue
  • Svelte
  • Flutter
  • Ionic
  • Redux
  • MobX
  • Tailwind
  • styled-components
  • AngularJS
  • HTML5
  • CSS3
  • Sass
  • Less
  • Bootstrap
  • jQuery
  • Figma
  • InVision
  • Photoshop
  • Illustrator
  • Flash

Backend

13
  • Java
  • Node.js
  • PostgreSQL
  • Spring Boot
  • Maven
  • Express
  • GraphQL
  • LoopBack
  • PHP
  • WordPress
  • MySQL
  • MongoDB
  • Redis

DevOps & Tools

25
  • GCP
  • Kubernetes
  • Terraform
  • Istio
  • Docker
  • AWS
  • Cloudflare
  • Netlify
  • Bash
  • Ansible
  • Jest
  • Cypress
  • Playwright
  • Vitest
  • Storybook
  • Webpack
  • Vite
  • ESLint
  • Prettier
  • Stylelint
  • Git
  • npm
  • Yarn
  • Gulp
  • Claude Code

Highlighted: the ones I use most

Career

Work Experience

    • GCP
    • Java
    • Spring Boot
    • Kubernetes
    • Istio
    • Terraform
    • React
    • TypeScript
    • Tailwind
    • Next.js
    • Claude Code
    • Working in a full-stack/DevOps team with the goal of building a bank in the cloud using technologies like Google Cloud Platform, Kubernetes + Istio, Java + Spring Boot and React.

    Visit Nordnet Bank AB ↗

    • React
    • AngularJS
    • TypeScript
    • AWS
    • Storybook
    • Bash
    • Ansible
    • PHP
    • JavaScript
    • Introduced unit/integration/e2e testing into our daily workflow which greatly reduced the number of bugs in all of our products.
    • Developed and implemented a translation tool into our CI pipeline which automates UI translations and reduces the dev team's workload.
    • Set up a strategy for gradually moving our main app from AngularJS to React which allowed us to hire junior React developers without any AngularJS knowledge.
    • Identified and solved numerous performance issues in our internal app for importing users from Excel spreadsheets, which reduced the scripting time from 2 minutes to just a couple of milliseconds.
    • Improved our frontend infrastructure by moving from Apache servers to AWS S3 and CloudFront.
    • Learned about DevOps which enabled me to take on-call responsibility and offload our Ops backlog.

    Visit Binogi ↗

    • Node.js
    • React
    • Angular
    • Flutter
    • Gatsby
    • LoopBack
    • WordPress
    • MongoDB
    • JavaScript
    • Built a role-based REST API, admin panel and client side web app for the online academy implementing features like purchasing and taking courses, completing exams and receiving grades.
    • Designed and developed a 10+ page mobile app in Flutter for both Android and iOS.
    • Rewrote the company WordPress website with React/Gatsby improving performance, security and SEO.
    • Used Node.js to build a CLI automation tool for converting PDF books to JSON/Image based format used by internal platforms.
    • Angular
    • Ionic
    • Less
    • Sass
    • Node.js
    • JavaScript
    • Utilized Ionic to develop a 40+ view, bidirectional (i18n) payment platform app that supports 6 languages.
    • Developed an Angular/CreateJS platform for playing animated books for children exported from Adobe Animate.
    • Built an e-book reader web and mobile app using Angular and Epub.js.
    • AngularJS
    • jQuery
    • Bootstrap
    • Photoshop
    • Node.js
    • JavaScript
    • Collaborated with a small team on building multiple single-page web applications based on AngularJS and Node.js.
    • Demonstrated the ability to learn and apply new technologies.
    • Excelled at delivering high-quality, cross-browser UI/UX.
    • Photoshop
    • Flash
    • WordPress
    • HTML5
    • CSS3
    • jQuery
    • JavaScript
    • Completed over 30 projects and held a 5-star rating on Elance, the freelancing platform that preceded Upwork.
    • Worked with a team of designers and backend developers on building ThemeForest HTML templates and WordPress themes.
    • Assisted multiple companies from all over the world in building and maintaining their online presence.

Let's connect

Whether it's a project, a role or the perfect squat depth, I'm happy to talk about it.

Get in touchMy portfolio