Erik Szabó

Solutions Architect · from brief to production

specification, full‑stack, DevOps, agentic AI

I design, build and run cloud-native applications at volume: from cluster topology through API surface to how the front end actually renders.

By day that means enterprise platforms of every age: legacy systems I inherited and greenfield ones I designed, usually in the same week.

By night: generative art, a sci-fi psychological horror trilogy that so far lives only in design documents, and small tools built because something annoyed me exactly once.

Experience

Systems Architect
HMSoft Zrt.
Rendszerszervező
formerly Hermész-Soft Kft.
to Dec 2024
Jun 2018 – now8 yrs 3 mos
- Take a client request through to a working solution: architecture, tech stack selection, specification, and demonstration.
- Build it out with the small specialist team I manage, mentoring through the development cycle.
- Own technical design across the whole stack: cluster topology, service boundaries, API surface, and front-end rendering strategy.
- Evaluate and introduce new technology, carrying it from trial through team-wide adoption and the migration of the systems it replaces.
- Work across several concurrent client platforms (legacy systems and greenfield projects alike), each with its own stack, constraints and delivery cadence.
- Leading the integration of AI into the team's development workflow: the implementation plan, the engineering guidelines, and the in-house tooling behind it.
Notable work
What I can name, at least.
OSZK
National Széchényi Library
- Architected LibMate, the multi-tenant platform covering the library's full operational vertical (ISBN office, legal deposit, digital processing and integrated library services): every participating institution composes its own module stack, each module an independently-deployed React SPA loaded into a host application over a cross-domain bridge, served by federated GraphQL supergraphs.
- Delivered its online public access catalogue, configurable per institution: a static Next.js site using client islands for interactivity (reader accounts, circulation against live physical inventory, and in-browser reading of public-domain works).
- Built MEK+, the e-document lending service now live to every public library in Hungary, opening a 35,000-volume collection of rights-protected works across the EU: a closed-loop Electron client on library workstations plus an institution portal for managing workstation access, with a zero-trust identity-aware proxy at the perimeter and custom entitlement logic deciding what each reader may borrow.
MESZK
Hungarian Chamber of Health Care Professionals
- Created the member management system and the self-service portal that surfaces it: a member-facing SPA injected into the chamber's CMS over a cross-domain bridge, where members manage their records and pay chamber dues.
MTVA
Hungarian public service broadcaster
- Took on the CMS platform estate: the broadcaster's news, sport and streaming properties, serving multi-million visitor volumes.
- Ran the recent major CMS and runtime version upgrades across that estate, on sites that cannot go down.
- Shipped coverage platforms for high-impact live events, including national election nights, where traffic arrives in short, predictable, very large spikes.
- Rebuilt Médiaklikk's user handling on a standards-based identity provider.
- Engineered its recommender: machine-learning clustering over content and user interest, served by a backend sized for high-volume interaction.
- Devised a CMS-agnostic plugin architecture for the estate: TypeScript plugins with UI and business logic decoupled and their data moved out of the CMS into portable tables. Ported three legacy plugins as references and built nine more on it.
- Designed the next iteration of the platform on a CMS-independent, event-driven back-end that emits render-ready record shapes and per-consumer regeneration messages, with a high-throughput public API feeding the mobile clients and the interactivity layer.
- Developed the consumer front end as event-driven static pages, cheap to serve and fully crawlable, with client islands for fast-changing content like cover pages.
- Split serving from rendering: rendered pages live in S3 behind a Redis index, so unknown URLs 404 without touching the database and published pages outlive every deployment.
TypeScriptNode.jsReactNext.jsElectronGraphQLApollo FederationExpressPostgreSQLRedisRabbitMQElasticsearchS3PrismaKeycloakOIDCCloudflare AccessDockerKubernetesHelmArgoCDBitbucket PipelinesDigitalOceanPrometheusGrafanaLokiNew RelicPingdomWordPressPHPPythonVitestJestBDDAccessibility (WCAG)Machine learningAgentic workflows
Chief Executive Officer
Infinity Esports
Oct 2010 – Jun 20187 yrs 8 mos
- Led delivery and the structured after-action reviews that closed each cycle: team management, competition and event execution, and the B2B and B2C relationships around them.
- Held the budget, resource planning and supplier relationships across the group.
- Designed, built and operated the physical and logical network: routing, QoS, VLAN segmentation, and a high-throughput WiFi mesh with captive-portal guest access.
- Owned the full machine estate: Windows and Linux servers running Hyper-V, AD DS, DHCP and storage, plus a fleet of 60 gaming PCs held to a single image through centralised deployment and write-filter management.
- Specified and built the group's in-house software, back-end and front-end: a hospitality server-client system, an event organiser, and an event coverage application.
- Built the AV and media systems, from a broadcast studio for live streaming (stream infrastructure, audio mixing, video signal processing) to the in-room sound and display distribution for the venue itself.
Notable work
A scene built on enthusiasm, extension cords, and sheer stubbornness.
- Planned and ran the Infinity Csarnok LAN series, a recurring tournament event drawing fields of up to 36 teams. Still running today, now past its sixtieth edition.
- Managed and deployed the rental equipment park at gaming expos and events, including PlayIT, Hungary's largest gaming show.
- Designed and built the Infinity Esport Bár in central Budapest: a permanent esports venue with gaming stations, consoles, projection and sound, hosting tournaments and corporate events.
PHPJavaJavaScriptSQLWindows ServerLinuxHyper-VAD DSNetwork designWiFi mesh

Stack

Languages

TypeScriptJavaScriptPHPPython

Frontend

ReactNext.jsISRIslands architectureMicro-frontendsCross-domain messagingElectronMUIAccessibility (WCAG)

Backend

RESTGraphQLApollo FederationMicroservicesEvent-driven architectureRabbitMQMulti-tenancyNode.jsExpressPostgreSQLRedisElasticsearchPrisma

Infrastructure

KubernetesHelmArgoCDGitOpsBitbucket PipelinesGitHub ActionsDockerDigitalOceanOn-premise clustersS3Linux

Observability

PrometheusGrafanaLokiNew RelicPingdom

Platform

KeycloakOIDCJWTCloudflare AccessHeadless CMSWordPressCloudflare WorkersCloudflare Pages

Tooling

TurborepopnpmViteStorybook

Testing

VitestTesting LibraryJestPlaywrightIntegration testingE2E testingBDDVisual regression

AI & agents

Machine learningRecommender systemsAgentic workflowsAI developer toolingAI-assisted development

Education

Molecular Bionics
Szegedi Tudományegyetem – TTIK
2012 – 2014
Biology, chemistry, physics and mathematics theory and laboratory practice, alongside C, C++, OpenGL and Java, economics, computer architecture, and analog and digital electronics.
Information Technology
Szolnoki Műszaki Szakközép- és Szakiskola
2008 – 2011
Network design and program development: Pascal, C and C#; Cisco physical and logical network planning, installation and supervision; Windows Server with Hyper-V, DHCP, DNS and Active Directory.

Languages

Hungarian · Native

English · Fluent