What awaits us in CTS? Marek Cvrk on trends and opportunities for developers

We talked to Marek Cvrk, our CTO, about current technology trends, innovations of the CTS platform, and the growth of the company, including the challenges of finding new developers. Read how we're evolving, what's ahead, and what you can be a part of as a talented developer. 

Marek, we've had a busy period of challenges and opportunities. What have you achieved  in development in the last year? 

One of our most significant achievements was the deployment of a new project based on microservice architecture, which we successfully put into production in the OpenShift cloud environment. This project leverages modern technologies such as ASP.NET Core 8.0 and PostgreSQL to provide a suite of cloud-native services in the retail investment area. With this project, we were able to experiment with new technologies that we had not used before. This has significantly helped us move forward technologically in cloud delivery, for which I am very happy. 

 Furthermore, we were able to successfully launch an implementation project of our CTS platform to a new client, where it will be running in the AWS cloud for the first time. This will significantly expand the delivery capabilities of our core platform. It is also the first major implementation with an English speaking client. This pushes the team's capabilities in this area and supports the firm's organic move into an international environment. 

 We have also made strides in the use of artificial intelligence in the development of our software. We've been able to automate some routine tasks, such as preparing unit test baselines, and migrate them to dedicated GPT's within the OpenAI Chat GPT platform. This move not only streamlines our work, but also allows us to focus on the more complex aspects of development. 

 We've got a lot of work under our belt. I am fortunate to work with a great team of people who are constantly evolving. We maintain good relationships within the team and foster collaboration, which makes the work go well. 

What new technological developments are you planning in the near future?  

This year and next, we plan to start the process of migrating our CTS platform to a microservices architecture. We have currently identified several functional blocks that will be implemented into CTS in the form of microservices. We will create a framework that we will continue to use as part of this transition. 

We will continue to replace the .NET framework with the .NET Core frameworks in our application components. The goal is to transition to a new family of .NET frameworks that will be further developed by Microsoft in the future to enable modern application development for cloud environments. 

We have also prepared a new concept of functionality delivery based on feature flags, which we would like to gradually develop and extend ideally to all our clients. This concept allows us to decouple the deployment of functionalities from the deployment of a specific version of our platform, from which we hope for greater flexibility and security of delivery. 

These activities will once again offer developers interesting new challenges and opportunities for personal development. 

What are your visions for the further growth of your team and how do you plan to work on its future? 

We aim primarily at modern and efficient software development and delivery - regular upgrades of technology and architecture, moving towards the cloud and automating the development and delivery process. 

However, we need specific ideas for innovation to achieve these goals. This is where I try to leverage the creative people on my team who come up with ideas to move things forward. The idea is reviewed by a group of technical leaders and if it is judged to be beneficial, it is then put into practice. 

Due to the increasing demand for development of our CTS platform, we are looking for talented developers to increase our capacity. Successful implementation of modern practices and technologies is what helps us attract them. 

Despite our gradual growth, we strive to maintain a friendly family atmosphere and a personal approach, which we believe is key to a successful collaboration. We also recently held an autumn team event, which was a great opportunity for newcomers to make new relationships and become better integrated into our team. 

And what do you do in your time off? 

There is not much free time but when it comes, I devote it completely to my family. In the winter we started teaching our youngest son to ski, which was a great adventure and fun. Apart from that, we love to travel and discover new places. I also try to keep up with sports activities. Currently I have acquired 12 cubes of wood, so I do wood sports when possible. Other than that, I go for a run every now and then.