Curriculum vitae
Philip von Bargen
Senior Software Engineer
Profile
Web-focused Senior Software Engineer with nearly two decades of experience building complex products and the platforms behind them. I specialize in turning demanding domains into accessible, performant, and maintainable web applications, while working comfortably across APIs, cloud infrastructure, observability, and delivery systems. I’m particularly interested in using thoughtful architecture and AI-enabled tooling to help teams make clearer decisions and evolve software with confidence.
Experience
Radix ILS, Hamburg, Germany (Remote) — Senior Software Engineer
January 2025 - now
- Established and evolved Radix’s shared web platform: a TypeScript/Next.js monorepo spanning internal products, the investor portal, and corporate site, with reusable packages, shared API contracts, observability, and automated delivery.
- Built complex reinsurance workflows for underwriting and portfolio management, including interactive structuring graphs, catastrophe-risk mapping, loss-impact analysis, valuations, investor reporting, and financial operations.
- Led cross-cutting improvements to architecture and engineering quality, introducing accessible component and form foundations, performance instrumentation and optimization, reliable testing and CI/CD, and containerized deployments on AWS and Kubernetes.
second break, Global — Just me
April 2024 - December 2024
- Explored new ways of staying organized and productive; overhauled my approach to knowledge work & retention.
- Worked on my physical & mental health, life admin, and a bit of traveling in Europe and the states.
dbt Labs, New York, USA (Remote) — Senior Software Engineer
April 2022 - April 2024
- Worked on dbt Explorer — a frontend application built on top of the Discovery API (operated by the same team) using GraphQL to showcase ingested metadata for dbt Cloud runs.
It allows data engineers to browse dbt projects on a self-documenting site and makes it easy to navigate complex dependencies by relying on the interactive DAG view, an advanced search, and lots of other developer productivity tools. - Created a monorepo setup for the internal design system and the Explorer team, with fully automated CI/CD pipeline publishing internal npm packages and deploying to Vercel (PR previews and pre-prod integration environment)
- Relaunched the dbt Cloud IDE frontend — a green-field project using an existing restful API. Resulting in massive performance and speed improvements, as well as faster and more reliable feature development through its modular and asynchronous re-architecture.
taking a break, Global — Chief Sabbatical Officer 🏝
May 2021 - April 2022
- A good amount of soul-searching; surfed in Costa Rica and Portugal; visited family and friends in Europe for 2 months.
- Rebuilt my personal website with a modern tech stack, including TypeScript, Gatsby, Tailwind CSS, and Docker.
Sotheby’s, New York, USA — VP, Senior Developer
January 2020 - May 2021
- Created the MVP for a task-based tool (internally named “Phoenix”) where the company’s specialists can evaluate items for sale — for both the live in-house auctions and Sotheby’s “Buy Now” marketplace — and stay in close contact with the seller to guide them through the process.
- Built a comprehensive multi-step form used by potential sellers to submit their items and get a valuation for them, these items were then processed via Phoenix.
- Ensured that new and old functionality was ADA-compliant after an internal accessibility audit.
- Started work on a React-based component library to consolidate UI/UX across multiple teams — unfortunately this project was down-prioritized and didn’t get enough resources allocated for it to have an impact.
- Facilitated knowledge transfer and idea sharing between Sotheby’s web engineers in New York and a larger contracting partner in Iceland with regular meetings and collaborations.
Spotify, New York, USA — Senior Engineer
October 2015 - January 2020
- Technical lead for a group of engineers to architect “Spotify for Artists” — the next iteration of “Spotify Fan Insights” — as a platformized, progressive web app, using TypeScript, React, and Redux.
When I left, the platform was maintained by over two dozen frontend engineers across multiple teams and had its own infrastructure team. - Part of the department’s web infrastructure team which focused on improving developer experience by streamlining/evangelizing processes and technologies, creating a shared design system, and building a continuous delivery system for web projects at Spotify.
- Built and maintained the web version of the “Canvas” feature, allowing an artist’s team to set a fullscreen image or looping video to replace the album artwork in the iOS and Android apps.
- Lead frontend engineer for the artist-facing “Spotify Fan Insights” MVP, using Angular.js and D3.js.
- Interviewed potential new hires; mentored and taught other frontend engineers.
Spotify, Stockholm, Sweden — Experienced Developer
October 2013 - October 2015
- Lead frontend developer on the team that architected and implemented Spotify’s OAuth2 infrastructure for login and allowing internal/3rd-party apps to request permissions for using the Spotify APIs.
- Helped develop and maintain frontend infrastructure components that were used across multiple internal teams and offices.
- Embedded with various teams to bootstrap single-page-applications for their own systems.
- Drove adoption and standardization of best practices and frameworks for internal frontend projects.
- Created dashboards and tooling for maintaining and monitoring internal services.
SinnerSchrader, Hamburg, Germany — Developer
August 2011 - September 2013
- Completely overhauled the online presence of Germany’s largest insurance company, using responsive web design in a close-knit interdisciplinary team. Additionally, helped to create the separate mobile branch of the project which was building highly specialized web and hybrid apps for iOS and Android.
- Part of the core team maintaining one of Germany’s most successful online banks and was responsible for JavaScript, HTML, and CSS of the company’s public pages.
- Supported our apprentices with learning new technologies and taught them JavaScript fundamentals.
deepblue networks, Hamburg, Germany — Junior Web Developer
January 2010 - August 2011
- Implemented and maintained websites on both the frontend and backend using the Symfony framework (PHP, MySQL, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Linux).
- Ensured cross-browser functionality and layout across various operating systems.
- Reference for project managers and designers about technical feasibility of new functions and layouts.
Education
deepblue networks, Hamburg, Germany — Apprenticeship
August 2007 - January 2010
- Practical part of my apprenticeship with supervision of an instructor.
- Built and maintained small to medium-sized web projects for multinational clients from day one.
Technical College G18, Hamburg, Germany — Computer Science Expert: Software Development
August 2007 - January 2010
- Theoretical part of my apprenticeship at deepblue networks.
- Classes were held bilingually (English and German), 3-4 weeks at a time each quarter.
- Two week exchange program with Robert Morris University in Chicago, IL.