At NASK (Research and Academic Computer Network) in Warsaw, I led engineering on Academica — a national digital preservation system for the National Library of Poland (2008–2014).
Context
Academica is a long-running national programme, not a side project. The mandate is to digitise, preserve, and make accessible Polish cultural heritage: books, documents, and multimedia held by the National Library. Engineering had to account for decades-long retention — storage tiers, cataloguing rules, researcher access, and public discovery — with stakeholders on site in Warsaw.
What I contributed
- Architecture and delivery — from initial design through production launch: public viewing, researcher workflows, and digitisation pipelines for library collections
- Full-stack product build — Java, Spring, MyBatis, MySQL, and Apache Solr; schemas and search tuned for complex cataloguing and high-volume retrieval
- Preservation strategy — long-term storage design across disk, tape, and remote locations for integrity and disaster recovery
- Team leadership — led a cross-functional product team (engineers, QA, design); later broader department responsibilities as the programme grew — all colocated in Poland with direct National Library partnership
What I bring to the table
This is where I learned to design systems meant to outlive a sprint: explicit trade-offs with domain experts, boring technology where it counts, and interfaces teams can evolve without rewriting history. That mindset still shapes how I advise startup teams — build for the next phase of growth, not just the demo.