Kim Sandell
Stockholm
Summary
Dynamic technology leader with extensive expertise in enterprise software architecture, system design, and performance engineering.
Specializes in developing resilient, scalable microservices and comprehensive solutions across banking, retail, and telecom sectors.
Proven ability to architect high-performance systems that integrate technical precision with business strategy, ensuring secure, efficient solutions aligned with organizational objectives.
Expertise in quality assurance and performance testing, with a track record of leading large-scale projects using tools like HP LoadRunner and HP Performance Center. Committed to optimizing system performance through collaboration with development teams.
A hands-on leadership approach fosters innovation and drives the integration of AI and DevOps practices, consistently delivering measurable results and creating value from code to cloud.
Overview
28
28
years of professional experience
Work History
CEO at Celarius Finland
Celarius
06.2014 - Current
Lead Consultant, Owner & Founder of Celarius, CTO.
- Delivered many projects in Enterprise Software Architecture , system design/development and performance testing areas.
Senior QA Mage
Kindred Group plc
11.2017 - 09.2018
- Worked as Quality assurance and Performance Testing team member
- HP LoadRunner, JMeter and many custom solutions aiding in QA
- Traveled Stockholm, Gibraltar, London and other places to teach QA teams methologies
IT Capacity Manager
Kindred Group plc
07.2015 - 11.2017
- Responsibilities include measuring the capacity and performance of internal lottery systems, making sure the systems handled the expected loads.
- Designed & developed an in-house solutions to keep track of Micro-Service components, their meta-data and change history, producing reports to auditors and showing dashboards with real-time data from production systems.
- Helped affiliates and new acquisitions to measure their capacity & performance and help implement standardized ways to monitor and report the results of monitoring and testing.
Application Architect, QA Manager
GENERA NETWORKS
10.2013 - 05.2015
- Worked as Application Architect, QA manager, Offshore team lead and was responsible for design & development of the custom testing software used by Genera QA teams.
- Spearheaded the technical design of the specific integration of the company’s lottery product Nabor to state-owned operator Norsk Tipping’s central system.
- Lead development teams in Ukraine for several months
Senior QA Consultant at Celarius
OP Financial Group
09.2011 - 01.2013
- Worked as member of Performance Testing team testing banking applications using HP LoadRunner.
- I designed and implemented custom software to aid in the difficult end-to-end testing of the bank’s on-line banking systems.
- As performance tester I was responsible for the design of the test plans, implementation of the scripts, execution of the tests, and finally analysis of the results.
- The work required close co-operation with developers to find problems and bottlenecks in code.
QA Consultant (External) at Celarius
HiQ Finland
09.2008 - 01.2013
- Assignments have covered managing, planning, executing tests and analyzing and reporting the test results.
- I have been involved in Performance Testing and Managing large projects for public and privately held companies in the telecom, banking and public healthcare sectors.
QA Consultant (External) at Celarius
Nokia
05.2006 - 09.2011
- Performance tested www.nokia.com homepage
- Performance tested Phone Manufacturing plant software and process software, increased output by 15%
- Worked as an on-site performance tester/engineer for hundreds of large projects, using HP Performance Center and Load Runner as the main tools.
- Worked as technical team leader for the performance testing team (50 persons). The work consisted of communicating with the projects, understand the business needs, design the test plans, write/test the test scripts, execute the tests, and finally analyze results and create the reports with recommendations for improvement. In many cases I worked together with the developers to understand where the problems and bottlenecks where.
QA Consultant (External) at Celarius
TSG-Test Solutions
05.2006 - 09.2008
- Performance Testing: Design, documentation, execution and analysis of various customer systems
System Specialist at DNA
DNA Ltd
02.2006 - 09.2006
- Worked as a System Specialist, tracking down and fixing problems in the 200+ internal systems.
CTO at WinWAP
Winwap Technologies
02.2004 - 02.2006
- My responsibilities included systems administration, customer support responsibilities and product development coordination
CTO at NSF Telecom
NSF Telecom Ab
02.2002 - 12.2003
- I worked as the Chief Architect for the applications/systems we developed. The role included leading the development team as well as being the support contact for customers. The software was created for billing post/prepaid subscriptions in the telecom world. Customer references and delivery projects include Ericsson, Tele2 Sweden, Nigerian Telecom, Angola Telecom.
System Expert
L M Ericsson
12.1997 - 02.2002
- In Ericsson my role was Senior System Architect, with the responsibilities for both design and development of telecom related billing and telecom switch middle-ware software systems, telecom switch administration tools and several other applications. I specialized in writing back end systems and protocols (with emphasis on security)
Skills
Programming PHP, Assembler, JavaScript, Pascal, Delphi, Java, Basic
Frontend HTML/HTML5, HTTP(S), CSS3, JavaScript (ES6), React, Angular, Vuejs, Bootstrap
Backend RESTful APIs, GraphQL, WebSockets, MVC, Laravel, Yii, Symfony, Nodejs
Databases SQL (PostgreSQL, MySQL, Oracle, Firebird, MariaDB, SQLite)
Message Queue RabbitMQ, Solace PubSub
Cloud & DevOps AWS, Azure, GCP, Docker, Kubernetes, CI/CD (Jenkins, GitLab CI, GitHub Actions), Terraform, Ansible
Testing & QA JMeter, Selenium, Postman, LoadRunner, TestNG, Cypress
AI/ML Machine Learning, LLM (Large Language Models), NLP, Computer Vision
Architecture Microservices, Event-Driven Architecture, Serverless, Spin Framework, DDD (Domain-Driven Design)
Network TCP/IP, UDP, DNS, DHCP, HTTP(S), FTP, SSH, VPN, OSI Layer Protocols (Layer 2-7), Load Balancing, Firewalls
Methodologies Agile (Scrum, Kanban), Waterfall, Lean, SAFe
Real-Time WebSockets, Message Queue (RabbitMQ, Solace PubSub), Webhook Delivery
Monitoring Prometheus, Grafana, ELK Stack, New Relic, Datadog
Contact
Phone +358-40-830 7804 (Mobile)
Email Sandell@celarius.com
LinkedIn www.linkedin.com/in/kimsandell (LinkedIn)
Blog ptfrontline.wordpress.com (Blog)
GitHub https://github.com/ksandell and https://github.com/Celarius
Certification
- Java Basics (T2731)
- Certified LoadRunner Expert (2011)
Languages
English (Full Professional)
Finnish (Native or Bilingual)
Swedish (Native or Bilingual)
Projects
Mar 2025 - Nov 2025 | Webhook delivery service
- ✨ High-Throughput Webhook System with Enhanced Observability
- Developed a cloud-native, microservices architecture providing a fault-tolerant and highly performant webhook distribution engine. Utilizes real-time message brokers to ensure low-latency, exactly-once delivery semantics.
- Key features include a sophisticated exponential backoff retry strategy for resilience and extensive instrumentation (metrics, tracing, and logging) to support proactive monitoring and Service Level Objective (SLO) adherence. All operational aspects are exposed via a well-documented, complete REST API.
Skills: Solution Architecture · REST APIs · Event Driven Programming · Message Queue · System Monitoring
Apr 2024 - Nov 2025 | Queueing System
- For a client, I Designed and lead team to develop a near real-time modern Queueing system for Banks, Retailers, Restaurants, Airports etc. where people can obtain a "ticket" and wait in a queue until called. Mobile phones, Displays at customer site, analytics/reports, real-time notifications to employee phones, full event driven backend system.
Skills: Solution Architecture · Event Driven Programming · Message Queue · Analytics · Financial Reporting · Realtime Programming · Databases · Full-Stack Development · Mobile Applications · AI Software Development
Sep 2018 - Nov 2025 | Real-Time platform, Event driven & Microservice based
- Architectured, Designed and developed (with team) a near real-time MicroService based platform to handle retail market products from thousands of customers. Platform incorporates ESL labels, Digital Signage screen content updates and queue management systems, all working in near real time.
- The platform handles more than 1.5 billion product updates per month as of Jan 2025.
- Additionally to overall design responsibility I have also designed hundreds of RESTful API's, serving as the backbone communications system, as well as integrated clients to hundreds of client RESTful API's.
- The system also includes Event driven aspects, using Message Queues (Solace) for real time actions, monitoring, alerting and processing of time-critical issues.
Skills: Solution Architecture · Microservices · REST APIs · Event Driven Programming · RESTful WebServices · Message Queue · Cloud Infrastructure · Software Design · PHP · Databases · Artificial Intelligence (AI) · System Monitoring · Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD)
Feb 2018 - Present | Spin framework
- Super light MVC based framework for rapid REST API and static files, with many features written in PHP.
- Perfect for React/Angular UI's and light templated HTML pages in addition to REST API and Ajax services. it's also perfect for backend microservice development.
Skills: Solution Architecture · Event Driven Programming · Message Queue · Analytics · Financial Reporting · Realtime Programming · Databases · Full-Stack Development · Mobile Applications · AI Software Development
Timeline
Senior QA Mage
Kindred Group plc
11.2017 - 09.2018
IT Capacity Manager
Kindred Group plc
07.2015 - 11.2017
CEO at Celarius Finland
Celarius
06.2014 - Current
Application Architect, QA Manager
GENERA NETWORKS
10.2013 - 05.2015
Senior QA Consultant at Celarius
OP Financial Group
09.2011 - 01.2013
QA Consultant (External) at Celarius
HiQ Finland
09.2008 - 01.2013
QA Consultant (External) at Celarius
Nokia
05.2006 - 09.2011
QA Consultant (External) at Celarius
TSG-Test Solutions
05.2006 - 09.2008
System Specialist at DNA
DNA Ltd
02.2006 - 09.2006
CTO at WinWAP
Winwap Technologies
02.2004 - 02.2006
CTO at NSF Telecom
NSF Telecom Ab
02.2002 - 12.2003
System Expert
L M Ericsson
12.1997 - 02.2002