DUISBURG · EST. 2014 N 51.4344° · E 6.7623° REMOTE · FULL-TIME

Dennis Schmerbeck

Senior Fullstack Engineer. Twelve years deep in TypeScript, Angular and NestJS — pairing daily with Claude Code, GPT and Cursor to ship faster than the calendar should allow. I treat AI like a second IDE, not a gimmick.

Experience
12yrs
AI-paired
3+yrs
Stack
TS·ng·nest
PROFILE · DS-01 ACTIVE
Name Dennis Schmerbeck
Role Senior Fullstack Engineer
Based Duisburg, DE N 51.4344° · E 6.7623°
Status Full-time · home office Remote, async by default
Since 2014 12 years shipping
Stack TypeScript · Node · Angular NestJS · Fastify · Prisma · Zod · Nx · Jest
Data Postgres · MS SQL Prisma migrations · SQL-first
Infra Docker · K8s · Rancher · Helm Harbor registry · Azure DevOps
AI Claude Code · Cursor · GPT Paired daily since 2023
Mode Building · reviewing · reading diffs
v04.2026 EU · BER
PORTFOLIO · 2026 · NO.01
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0 1 — INTRODUCTION

Engineer
by trade, craftsman
by habit.

I'm Dennis. I've been writing software for twelve years, mostly inside TypeScript — Angular on the front, NestJS and Postgres on the back. Duisburg is home base; the work happens full-time from the home office, async by default.

For the last three-plus years my keyboard has been co-piloted. Claude Code for the heavy lifts, Cursor as my daily IDE, GPT for the rubber-duck conversations that used to need a colleague. I read every diff, I write every test — but I stopped pretending the AI tooling isn't already part of the craft.

What I care about: simple domain models, types that prove things, observable systems, and code the next engineer wants to touch. Late-night incident response taught me the rest.

0 2 — TOOLBOX

The kit.

The languages, frameworks and infra I reach for daily. Confidence levels are honest — green bars are what I'd happily own end-to-end.

// 01 · LANG
Type
Script
Strict configs, generics, branded types. The default for everything I touch.
PRIMARY10+ YRS
// 02 · RUNTIME
Node
.js
Event loop, streams, worker threads. Production for a decade.
PRIMARY10+ YRS
// 03 · FRONTEND
Angu
lar
Signals, standalone components, RxJS. Migrations from v8 → v17.
PRIMARY8 YRS
// 04 · BACKEND
Nest
JS
DI, modules, interceptors, OpenAPI. Clean boundaries between domains.
PRIMARY6 YRS
// 05 · BACKEND
Fast
ify
Low-overhead HTTP, schema-first routes. When NestJS is too much engine.
STRONG3 YRS
// 06 · SCHEMA
Zod
Runtime types, parse-don't-validate, shared schemas between API and client.
STRONG3 YRS
// 07 · ORM
Prisma
ORM
Typed queries, migrations, production-safe rollouts across every environment.
PRIMARY4 YRS
// 08 · MONOREPO
Nx
.dev
Affected graphs, generators, computation caching. Selective builds at scale.
STRONG4 YRS
// 09 · DATA
Post
gres
CTEs, RLS, partitions, json-b. SQL first, ORMs second.
PRIMARY9 YRS
// 10 · DATA
MS
SQL
T-SQL, stored procs, enterprise schemas. Where the legacy lives.
STRONG6 YRS
// 11 · TESTING
Jest
Unit tests, service mocking, snapshots. The safety net under every refactor.
PRIMARY7 YRS
// 12 · CONTAINERS
Doc
ker
Multi-stage builds, slim images, repeatable local envs. Boring in the best way.
PRIMARY7 YRS
// 13 · ORCHESTRATION
K8s
+ Rancher
Clusters, namespaces, rollouts. K8s without the white-knuckle YAML.
STRONG4 YRS
// 14 · PACKAGING
Helm
Charts
Dynamic values per env, templated releases, rollbacks you can run at 3am.
STRONG4 YRS
// 15 · REGISTRY
Harbor
Private image registry, automated publishing, signed releases into the cluster.
STRONG3 YRS
// 16 · CI/CD
Azure
DevOps
YAML pipelines, Docker@2 tasks, gated releases, secret management.
PRIMARY6 YRS
DEPLOYMENT PIPELINE PR → Azure Pipeline → Harbor → Helm → Rancher
01 Development
02 Test
03 Prelive
04 Production
0 3 — AI WORKFLOW

Pair-programmed
with the machine.

Three years deep into agentic coding. I don't prompt-and-pray — I run a tight loop of small diffs, fast tests, and reviewable plans. The AI moves the keys; I keep the map.

// 01 · AGENT SINCE 2024
Claude
Code

My heavy lifter. Multi-file refactors, schema migrations, audit-and-patch passes across whole repos. I write the brief, it writes the PR — then we argue about the diff.

refactorsmigrationsrepo-wide
// 03 · THINKING SINCE 2023
GPT
(o-series)

The whiteboard partner. Architecture sketches, edge-case enumeration, ad-hoc SQL reasoning, that one regex I'd rather not write twice. Cheap second opinion at 2am.

architecturerubber-duckSQL
OPERATING PRINCIPLE

I read every line the model writes. The fast loop matters — the taste does too.

0 4 — APPROACH

Boring tech. Sharp
execution.

01 — DESIGN

Model first.
Then the
screen.

Every project starts in the database. If the domain doesn't make sense on paper, no amount of UI polish will save it.

02 — BUILD

Types end
to end. No
excuses.

Schema → DTO → component prop. If the compiler can prove it, the QA team doesn't have to find it at 2am.

03 — SHIP

Observable
by default,
not optional.

Logs, traces, metrics, feature flags. You can't fix what you can't see, and you can't ship what you can't measure.

Say Hello
0 5 — GET IN TOUCH

Say
hello,
kindly.

Whether you're exploring a collaboration, discussing TypeScript and agentic workflows, or have a project in mind, I'd welcome the conversation. I read every message and aim to reply promptly.