Vasili Cekaskin

Software Engineer

Vasili Cekaskin

Software engineer. Product builder. Curious by nature.

I build web applications, cloud infrastructure, and independent products — from the first rough idea to software that runs in production.

Explore my workGet in touch

01Selected work

Things I've designed, built, and shipped.

An independent product I own end to end, a smaller tool for real users, and the kind of work I do in a professional team.

Featured Independent product

TrackDemos

A private Spotify for unfinished music.

Most music never gets released, and a lot of it shouldn't be — yet. TrackDemos gives musicians a place to upload demos, sketches, and rough mixes, keep them organized, and share them only with the people they trust.

Sharing starts private: every song has simple visibility controls, discovery happens through friends, and listening is designed for the phone in your pocket. It runs as a web app and a companion mobile app on one shared backend.

My role

I own it end to end: product direction, interface design, architecture, and implementation across web, mobile, backend, and infrastructure.

  • Next.js
  • React
  • TypeScript
  • React Native / Expo
  • Supabase
  • PostgreSQL
  • AWS S3
  • Stripe
Illustration of the concept, not a screenshot.

What made it interesting

  1. Privacy as a product feature — access rules that stay understandable to people who just want to send a song to three friends.

  2. Audio upload, storage, and playback built on S3, with subscription plans billed through Stripe.

  3. Started as an experiment in AI-assisted development and became a long-running study of how coding agents fit into a real engineering workflow — and where human judgment stays essential.

  4. Learning from real listeners: the hardest problems were usability and honest feedback, not the code.

Framer plugin

Email Form Responder

Form handling and automatic replies for Framer sites.

A plugin for Framer that takes care of what happens after someone submits a form: handling the submission and sending an automated email response, without the site owner wiring up their own backend.

My role: Designed and built as a small, reusable SaaS-style product.

  • Supabase
  • Email service integration
  • TypeScript

Professional work, anonymized

Built as part of a team at Qualitypool for the financial services industry. Proprietary, so described here without internal details.

  1. A greenfield customer self-disclosure application

    A new application that lets customers of financial intermediaries provide their own information securely. Built from scratch, from the data model to deployment.

    • Next.js
    • AWS Fargate
    • DynamoDB
    • Cognito

  2. Cloud-native services on AWS

    Containerized services and scheduled jobs for document synchronization, reporting, and integrations with external financial services APIs — defined end to end as infrastructure as code.

    • AWS CDK
    • ECS / Fargate
    • Docker
    • S3
    • CloudWatch

  3. Secure sign-in and access control

    Authentication and authorization flows for applications used by financial professionals, where getting permissions right matters more than shipping fast.

    • Cognito
    • IAM

  4. Modernizing a production frontend

    Migrating a live frontend across major framework and component library versions while keeping it running for the people who depend on it every day.

    • Next.js
    • React
    • TypeScript

Older experiments and side projects on GitHub

02About

I like software that's well built all the way down — and useful at the top.

I enjoy working across the stack — from designing the infrastructure behind an application to refining the interface people actually use. Most of my professional work has been in financial technology, building applications and AWS services where security and reliability aren't optional.

I came to software by a slightly longer road. I was born in Kyrgyzstan, grew up in Germany, and trained as an industrial mechanic before retraining as an application developer. That path left me with a practical streak: I like to understand a problem properly before picking tools, and to see things through until they work for the people using them.

Outside of my job I build my own products, make music, and teach programming to kids. TrackDemos is where the first two meet.

Vasili Cekaskin standing on a terrace by the sea at sunset

How I work

  • Understand the problem first

    The right architecture depends on who uses the software and what can go wrong. I ask a lot of questions early.

  • Own the whole thing

    I'm comfortable taking a feature from requirements through infrastructure to the interface — and staying responsible for it after it ships.

  • Use AI, keep the judgment

    Coding agents make me faster. Reviewing, testing, and deciding what good looks like is still my job.

03Experience

Where I've learned the craft.

Seven years of professional software development, including my training — most recently building production applications and cloud infrastructure in fintech.

  1. Since January 2024

    Software DeveloperQualitypool / Qualitytech

    Production software for the financial services industry — applications used by mortgage intermediaries and financial professionals, and the AWS infrastructure behind them.

    • Built a greenfield customer self-disclosure application with Next.js, AWS Fargate, DynamoDB, and Cognito.
    • Designed and deployed AWS microservices with the CDK, including containerized services, scheduled jobs, document synchronization, and reporting.
    • Integrated external financial services APIs and other third-party systems to automate business processes.
    • Developed and maintained secure authentication and authorization workflows.
    • Worked across networking, storage, access management, monitoring, and security services on AWS.
    • Migrated frontend applications between major framework and component library versions.
    • Turned stakeholder requirements into working software, and mentored a junior developer.

  2. Ongoing, part-time

    Programming TutorCoding classes for children

    Teaching programming and problem-solving to children in small groups. Explaining a loop to a child is a surprisingly good test of whether you understand it yourself.

  3. 2019 – 2022

    Application Developer (Fachinformatiker für Anwendungsentwicklung), vocational trainingInVision AG

    Three years of professional software development training — where I learned to build software as part of a team, in a professional environment.

  4. 2015 – 2018

    Industrial MechanicVocational training

    Before software, I trained to build and maintain machines — which still shapes how I think about things that have to hold up in daily use.

04Expertise

What I bring to a team.

Grouped by what it's for rather than by buzzword, with the tools I use for each underneath.

  • Full-stack engineering

    Typed, maintainable applications from the database to the interface — APIs, background jobs, integrations, and responsive UIs built from well-structured components.

    • TypeScript
    • React
    • Next.js (App Router)
    • Node.js
    • Fastify
    • Ruby
    • REST
    • GraphQL
    • PostgreSQL
    • Supabase
    • Mantine
    • Chakra UI
    • Stripe

  • Cloud & infrastructure

    AWS infrastructure defined as code: containers, serverless functions, data stores, identity, and the monitoring and security around them.

    • AWS CDK
    • ECS / Fargate
    • Lambda
    • API Gateway
    • AppSync
    • Cognito
    • DynamoDB
    • RDS
    • S3
    • CloudFront
    • Route 53
    • IAM
    • KMS
    • WAF
    • CloudWatch
    • Docker
    • GitHub Actions

  • Product & architecture

    Deciding what to build and how it should be shaped — trade-offs, data models, access rules, and keeping a codebase easy to change a year from now.

    • Software architecture
    • Authentication & authorization
    • Row Level Security
    • Testing
    • Code review
    • Refactoring
    • Security-conscious design
    • Stakeholder communication

  • AI-assisted engineering

    Coding agents are part of how I work every day. I use them to move faster, and I review what they produce the same way I'd review a colleague's pull request.

    • Claude Code
    • OpenAI Codex
    • OpenCode
    • Agent workflows

05 Contact

Have an interesting opportunity or something you'd like to build?

I'd love to hear about it. Email is the easiest way to reach me.

vasili@cekask.in

Hiring

I'm looking for a full-time software engineering role — full-stack, cloud-native, or product-focused — where I can contribute to technical decisions. Remote or hybrid around Düsseldorf, Essen, and Cologne.

Independent projects

I also take on selected independent work: web applications, internal tools, AWS infrastructure, API integrations, improving an existing codebase, or technical advice. Tell me what you're trying to do, and we'll see if I'm the right person.