József Szabó
Full-stack PHP developer · Symfony, Angular, PostgreSQL · QA
README.md
Profile
I am a full-stack PHP developer in Budapest. I build web applications with Symfony on the server and Angular and TypeScript in the browser, and I follow the work down into PostgreSQL, where I write triggers and stored procedures and help design the schema underneath them.
For more than three years I coordinated work on a web platform, in a GitLab CI/CD and RHEL environment. I worked with the external development team and organised the internal testing of what they delivered, and agreed database design and infrastructure needs with colleagues in-house. Alongside that, I built the platform’s support site on my own, as well as REST and SOAP API endpoints for partner organisations.
I came to development by way of testing. I started in IT in 2008 with data preparation and VBA, then spent several years as a software tester, writing automated tests in Selenium WebDriver and running user acceptance and exploratory testing. Since then I have refactored legacy PHP, built applications in Laravel and CodeIgniter, and for a few years looked after WordPress: a multisite of more than 200 sites, with themes I built for it.
- Cinema
- Hiking in the woods
- Dogs
- Walks
- Pho soup
- Video games
CHANGELOG
Experience
Employers are described by type, not by name. The full CV is available by email.
Lead PHP developerNational professional chamber2021–2026
- Coordinated technical and development work on a web platform (Symfony back end, Angular front end) over a project of more than three years, including internal testing of what the external development team delivered.
- Fixed bugs and added features in the Symfony back end and the Angular front end, working within a GitLab CI/CD and RHEL environment.
- Familiar with X.509-based authentication flows.
- Wrote, extended and optimised PostgreSQL queries, triggers and stored procedures, and agreed database design and infrastructure needs with internal colleagues.
- Built the CI/CD processes for a multi-container, multi-server, zero-downtime environment.
- Quality assurance of the projects: QA, SonarQube, end-to-end and unit tests, user acceptance testing and CI/CD. I also maintained a legacy Java and Go microservice environment.
- Most recently: a multi-container web application running on Podman. I coordinated its development and quality assurance, and built the PostgreSQL procedures it needed.
- Built the platform’s support site on my own, in Symfony and Angular.
- Developed web applications for partner organisations, along with REST and SOAP API endpoints.
- Maintained and extended the organisation’s WordPress sites and intranet, refactored legacy PHP code, and advised other development projects as a technical expert.
PHP developerPublic medical university2020–2021
- Developed the university’s WordPress multisite, which served more than 200 sites and about 800 administrative users.
- Rebuilt the home page and the news section from the ground up, on both the front end and the back end.
- Built WordPress themes with SASS, Node, Gulp and Bootstrap 4, as well as small Laravel applications.
IT expertPublic university (public administration)2016–2020
- Coordinated the development and testing of two web systems built by an external supplier.
- Acted as the supplier’s point of contact and checked the quality of its deliveries.
- Introduced the university’s internal research-grant application system and a system for monitoring government indicators, which supported the university’s expert work in an EU project.
PHP developer (part-time)Government social-welfare directorate2018–2019
- Adapted SeedDMS, an open-source document management system running on Ubuntu, to the organisation’s workflows and permission model.
Junior analystPublic health-development institute2014–2015
- Prepared reports, wrote database queries and cleaned data for the expert work of an EU-funded project.
Software tester (QA)National education office2012–2015
- Tested new releases of education-sector IT systems, partly through automated tests written in Selenium WebDriver.
Software tester (QA)Online price-comparison company2011–2012
- Tested web software as part of an IT team of more than ten people, with Selenium WebDriver among other tools.
IT assistantEducation-sector non-profit company2008–2011
- Prepared data for analysis, and built data-collection sheets and databases in Excel and Access, automated with VBA.
tests/
Skills
The stack I work in, and the testing methods I brought with me from my QA years, grouped by area.
- Back end
- PHP
- Symfony
- Laravel
- WordPress
- Node.js
- Java
- Go
- Front end
- Angular
- TypeScript
- JavaScript
- jQuery
- SCSS
- Gulp
- Bootstrap
- Databases
- PostgreSQL
- MariaDB
- MySQL
- DevOps and infrastructure
- GitLab
- CI/CD
- RHEL
- Docker / Podman
- Bash
- PowerShell
- Git
- Testing and QA
- QA
- Selenium WebDriver
- UAT
- Exploratory testing
- E2E testing
- Unit testing
- Jasmine
- SonarQube
- Other
- REST / SOAP API
- Postman
- SoapUI
- O365
- Redis
- XML
- SPSS
- X.509
projects/
Projects
Work and personal projects, each with a few lines on what it is for.
Fuzzphony
My open-source search library for PHP and Symfony, built on PostgreSQL alone. It adds ranked full-text search that tolerates typos and ignores accents, with filters and a query language, and needs no Elasticsearch, Meilisearch or other external service. Existing tables stay as they are: the index lives in a separate table beside them. Built with an AI-agentic workflow; mutation testing keeps its quality in check.
This CV site
2026
This very site. Built in Angular, in English and Hungarian, with no external services and no tracking. Type check, lint, unit, end-to-end and accessibility tests run automatically on every change.
Audit and administration systems
2019–2021
Web applications for legal-compliance audits, where I worked out the business logic. The forms are built dynamically from about 400 questions of several types, with complex validation; the system evaluates the answers and generates DOCX documents from them. A simpler audit on the same model, written in CodeIgniter, has about 300 questions and its own rules for calculation and aggregation.
- A project planning and registry system (Laravel 7, Bootstrap).
- A registry of EU grants (Laravel 8, Backpack).
Government indicator website
2015–2020
An information site on government indicators, built in WordPress, which I designed, developed and ran until 2020. I also did the technical work behind one of the indicators, the average road distance to the nearest government service point outside the capital (2015–2019), and produced the print-ready 2019 report with PHP and TCPDF. The method and the calculation of some of the indicators are mine too, done with the Google Maps API.
WordPress projects
2016–2021
WordPress sites for several clients, which I built, tuned and kept running: caching, PHP 7 migrations, server moves, CDN setup and smaller front-end changes. Alongside them came a role-based knowledge and document base, other client-facing tools, and landing and presentation sites.
National sport-promotion programme
2013–2015
The online system of a national sport programme in higher education, which I built and ran. About 17,000 users had registered by the time the programme closed in 2016.
Questionnaire research
2012–2021
Complete systems for questionnaire-based data collection, from the forms to the queries and statistical processing behind them, with basic use of IBM SPSS.
Admission data visualisation
2013
An interactive map of higher-education admission data for 2009–2013 that can be explored along several dimensions.
ABOUT
About
Education
- Computer software operator (OKJ secondary vocational qualification), 2002–2007
Languages
- Hungarian: native
- English (reading technical documentation): intermediate
- English (speaking and writing): basic
Recognition
Received a public university’s “Person of the Academic Year” award (2016/17) for introducing the IT system that handles its research-grant applications and monitoring.
CONTACT
Contact
The quickest way to reach me is by email.
REMOTE / HYBRID · Budapest