Portrait of Idriz Pelaj

Idriz Pelaj

Java Backend Engineer | Distributed Systems & SQL Performance

Over five years of cumulative paid Java development across freelance engagements and employment. Production experience in distributed messaging with Redis/NATS.io and Protobuf, relational database optimization, and cloud data ingestion. At LemonGaming, reduced certain SQL query latencies from several seconds to single-digit milliseconds.

Germany +49 152 3627 5314 idrizpelaj@gmail.com linkedin.com/in/idriz-pelaj github.com/idrizp

Experience

Software Developer — North Data GmbH, Hamburg, Germany | Jun 2025 – Present

  • Designed and built Java data ingestion pipelines on Google Cloud Platform, using parallel task orchestration to collect and continuously refresh large-scale company registrar datasets.
  • Balanced throughput, data freshness, reliability, and infrastructure cost; used JSoup, Gemini, and OCR for HTML, text, and document processing.
  • Built internal Java developer tooling with the GitHub API to streamline development workflows.

Java Backend Developer — Telara Studios, Remote | Mar 2022 – Aug 2022

  • Engineered a packet-based player distribution system across multiple Java server instances, using NATS.io for cross-instance messaging and data synchronization.
  • Designed and built a core permissions system backed by MariaDB.

Java Backend Developer — LemonGaming LTD, Remote | Aug 2020 – Feb 2022

  • Re-engineered SQL queries and MariaDB database structures, reducing certain query latencies from several seconds to single-digit milliseconds.
  • Developed Java backend components for distributed multiplayer server communication using Redis messaging and Protocol Buffers (Protobuf)/JSON serialization.
  • Built administrative tooling connecting web interfaces to live backend services for user record inspection and moderation actions.

Freelance Java Backend Developer — Remote | Oct 2017 – Nov 2019 | Ongoing paid, hourly engagements

  • Designed production backend infrastructure to distribute player sessions across multiple server instances, reduce overload, and improve application stability.
  • Implemented cross-server messaging and maintained and extended a fork of an open-source Java server implementation for a multiplayer gaming platform.

Skills

Professional
Java; SQL/MariaDB; Redis; NATS.io; Protocol Buffers (Protobuf); JSON; distributed systems; SQL optimization; Spring Boot; JPA/Hibernate; JDBC.
Cloud & tooling
Google Cloud Platform; Google Cloud Tasks; data ingestion; parallel task processing; Git; GitHub API; JSoup; Gemini API.
Additional
REST APIs; Kotlin; JavaScript.

Education

Jacobs University Bremen — BSc, Electrical and Computer Engineering | Aug 2022 – Jun 2025