About me
I’m Jan — 18 years old, based in northern Germany. Since August 2023 I’ve been doing my apprenticeship as a software developer at neusta software development.
What I do at neusta
Most of my day-to-day is PHP and Symfony — that’s the main framework we use. Early on I learned the basics fast, moved on to Composer, then Symfony, and from there Doctrine ORM with PostgreSQL, Twig templates, and testing (unit, integration, application). I’ve worked on a few real projects already:
- A burger shop e-commerce app — my first proper Scrum project, with a full CI/CD pipeline on GitLab and a custom Deployer PHP deployment setup to a Linux server
- An internal task tool for trainers to assign and review apprentice work
- A dailies webapp for a large admin team — integrated the Microsoft Teams API for live online status, plus email notifications
I’ve done Angular workshops and a session on design patterns on top of the project work. Docker replaced Deployer in later projects, and I’ve been using Linux as my main OS since day one of the apprenticeship.
What I do at home
Self-hosting is my main hobby. I run Proxmox on my own hardware and host a bunch of services — including my own Forgejo (Gitea) instance at git.kjan.de, a mail server, and various other things. I prefer GitHub Actions-style CI/CD and set it all up on Gitea Actions.
I’ve also been experimenting with AI-assisted development — built tankapp.kjan.de with a working Stripe integration to see how far you can push AI tools.
Kubernetes is next on my list. I’ve had a small cluster running before, but I want to actually learn it properly and get it into production.
Before the apprenticeship
- Internship at Ascora GmbH — extended an internal license management tool with ASP.NET as part of a team of three. First real contact with professional software development.
- Net-Piloten training
What I’m looking for
I want to work on projects that actually challenge me — proper CI/CD pipelines, real test suites, meaningful architecture decisions. Repetitive work with no learning curve kills my motivation. I’m at my best when I’m picking up something new or working on something that matters.