Fisnik
Laci

Senior Software Engineer · Princeton University

Building robust web systems — production platforms, internal tools, and projects that ship.

Current Princeton University
Focus Backend · Frontend · DevOps
Based in NY / NJ
About

Building and shipping web systems that people rely on.

A Senior Software Engineer with 7+ years of full-stack experience and a strong backend lean. Currently building and maintaining a suite of production web applications at Princeton University's Computer Science Department — serving faculty, staff, and students across teaching, research, and administration.

Most at home designing systems end-to-end — from the infrastructure up — and shipping side projects that scratch real itches. Originally from Albania, now based in Princeton, NJ.

Years engineering
7+
Production apps at Princeton
6+
Side projects
3
Skills

The tools I reach for.

A backend-leaning stack honed on a long-lived department codebase — with enough frontend and infra around it to own features end-to-end.

Backend

  • PHP 8
  • Symfony 7
  • Laravel
  • API Platform
  • Doctrine ORM
  • Drupal 10

Frontend

  • TypeScript
  • React 18
  • Stimulus
  • Vite
  • Tailwind CSS
  • SwiftUI

Data

  • PostgreSQL
  • MySQL
  • Redis
  • Qdrant
  • Symfony Messenger

Infrastructure

  • Docker
  • GitHub Actions
  • Deployer
  • Cloudflare Pages
  • LDAP
  • CAS
Experience

Where I've been.

  1. Software Engineer · Princeton University

    Computer Science Department

    Aug 2022 — Present Princeton, NJ

    Own the CS Department's production web portfolio — Symfony and Drupal applications serving faculty, staff, and students — and the CI/CD and deployment infrastructure around it.

    • Build and maintain a suite of Symfony applications covering authentication, access management, departmental tooling, and the faculty website.
    • Develop Drupal modules from scratch — custom authentication integrations, external data feeds, and an AI-powered RAG chat — shipped and running in production.
    • Established CI/CD with GitHub Actions and Deployer — 65% faster deployments and a 40% performance improvement from caching and query optimisation.
  2. Senior PHP Developer · Proxify IO

    Sep 2021 — Dec 2022 Remote

    Senior PHP contractor placed through Proxify's European talent network — Phalcon, Laravel, and Vue.js client projects in parallel with the day role.

    • Shipped a Phalcon MVC admin dashboard with expanded admin capabilities.
    • Designed and implemented a hardened two-factor auth (2FA) system.
    • Delivered a Laravel + Vue.js site end-to-end — build, feature work, and ongoing maintenance.
  3. Software Engineer & Team Lead · Raiffeisen Bank

    Sep 2019 — Jul 2022 Tirana, Albania

    Owned the bank's public web portfolio end-to-end — design, development, and ongoing maintenance — while mentoring junior developers and driving product campaign releases.

    • Sole owner of the public website portfolio: led design and development of product campaigns for new releases, and kept the platform performant and up to date.
    • Integrated the website with core banking and third-party systems — building reliable data flows in and out across multiple platforms.
    • Redesigned the public site for campaign-scale traffic — 45% faster page loads and a 25% lift in digital applications.
    • Mentored junior developers through code reviews and hands-on guidance, raising team delivery consistency and code quality.
  4. Web Developer · ASH — Albania Software House

    May 2019 — Sep 2019 Tirana, Albania

    Early-career development on the Zend MVC framework — contributing end-to-end from requirements through deployment.

    • Full-lifecycle work on Zend MVC — requirements through deployment.
    • Schema design, indexing, and SQL reporting across client projects.
Projects

Things I build.

A mix of side projects where I prototype ideas and work-built tools that stand on their own. One in active development, one running in production, and one in the App Store.

JobCopilot job search results — matched roles with skill tags, match scores, and Apply / Analyze fit / Cover letter actions
JobCopilot dashboard — active roles, strong matches, application stats, top matches today, weekly progress, and recent activity
01 In Development

JobCopilot

An AI-powered job search automation platform. Scrapes job boards, scores CVs against job descriptions, auto-generates tailored cover letters, and manages the entire pipeline via a Kanban board.

  • Symfony 7
  • API Platform 3
  • React 18
  • TypeScript
  • Vite
  • PostgreSQL
  • Redis
  • Symfony Messenger
  • DDEV
Admin dashboard showing LLM provider status, vector store health, query volume, response times, relevance scores, and top search topics
Ask-our-chat interface with a user question in flight and a summarizing indicator showing
02 Shipped · Production

Drupal RAG Chat

A Drupal 10 module that turns any content-heavy site into an AI-answerable knowledge base. Embeds and indexes site content, retrieves the most relevant chunks per query, and generates grounded answers with source links. Providers are swappable end-to-end: LLM (Anthropic Claude or local Ollama), embeddings (OpenAI or Ollama), and vector store (Qdrant or file-based). Ships with an admin dashboard that tracks queries, surfaces content gaps, and feeds thumbs-up/down back into the analytics loop.

  • Drupal 10
  • PHP 8
  • Anthropic Claude
  • OpenAI
  • Ollama
  • Qdrant
  • JavaScript
  • Drush
Micro-Habits search tab — browsing habit templates in dark mode
Micro-Habits home tab — active habit with streak stats and journey calendar
Micro-Habits settings — habit edit options and global preferences
03 Shipped · iOS

Micro-Habits

A SwiftUI iOS app for building small daily habits. Features habit templates, motivational prompts, and an archive system for completed habit runs.

  • SwiftUI
  • Swift
  • iOS
Contact

Let's build
something useful.

Got an interesting idea or a role worth talking about? I'd love to hear it. The fastest way to reach me is email — I read everything.