Manuel Hitz

Citizenship Swiss, born in 1980
Home Zürich, Switzerland
Contact hello@manuelhitz.com
CV manuelhitz.com and www.linkedin.com/in/manuelhitz
profile picture
I am an experienced Frontend Web Developer who is equally comfortable taking on backend work when a project calls for it. I care about code that lasts: high unit-test coverage as living documentation, consistent style and structure so any piece of code reads the same regardless of who wrote it, and a shared component library to keep the UI consistent across a product. In practice, that means shipping in small, reversible, incremental changes, multiple times a week, so the team can move fast together without breaking things for customers. I believe the best results come from close collaboration, with designers, backend engineers, and product owners alike, rather than working in isolation.

Experience

Currently
Exploring the possibilities of AI-assisted software development, and how to best integrate it into a modern web development workflow. Considering doing a CAS in AI-assisted software engineering at the Fernfachhochschule Schweiz (FFHS) in Fall 2026.
Jul 2024 – Apr 2026
Senior Frontend Engineer at ZF SCALAR in Lausanne, Switzerland (remote)
  • Help implement a new design system to be used by all teams inside ZF SCALAR
  • Finish the migration of the Bestmile web apps (see below) to the ZF SCALAR suite
  • Prototype a web app to plan resources for Cargo transportation

Extensive details: manuelhitz.com/zf-scalar.html

JavaScript, CSS, HTML, React, TypeScript

Sep 2021 – Apr 2024
Senior Frontend Engineer at Archilogic in Zürich, Switzerland (hybrid)

Development of a browser-based editor for interior spaces:

  • refreshing the whole UI by introducing an updated design system
  • swapping out the data layer, and improving drawing on the 2D canvas

Extensive details: manuelhitz.com/archilogic-1.html and manuelhitz.com/archilogic-2.html

JavaScript, CSS, HTML, Vue, Tailwind, TypeScript, linear algebra, trigonometry

Jan 2018 – Aug 2021
Senior Fullstack Developer at Bestmile in Lausanne, Switzerland
  • Implementation of a suite of web applications: Dashboard, allowing users to supervise operations in realtime; Administration, for the management of anything that is not related to live operations; Booking Portal, allowing third parties to create bookings; Account, handling SSO to all other applications.
  • Creation of private NPM packages to share CSS styles, map styles, React components and a JavaScript SDK for hundreds of Bestmile API endpoints.
  • Development of a proxy backend for the Android and iOS Traveler Apps.
  • Maintenance and development in existing backend micro-services.

Extensive details: manuelhitz.com/bestmile.html

JavaScript, CSS, HTML, React, Tailwind, Mapbox, NodeJS, PostgresSQL, Firebase, Express, Koa, Sequelize

May 2014 – Aug 2017
Senior Fullstack Developer at Doodle in Zürich, Switzerland
  • Implementation of a mobile web version of doodle.com.
  • Design and implementation of a common state of the art REST API for the mobile apps and the website.
  • Implementation of the redesign of doodle.com as a fully responsive website.

Extensive details: manuelhitz.com/doodle-1.html and manuelhitz.com/doodle-2.html

JavaScript, CSS, HTML, Backbone.js, MongoDB, JSF, Java

Feb 2013 – Dec 2013
Bike messenger at krick cyclomessagerie in Genève, Switzerland

Extensive details: manuelhitz.com/krick.html

Jan 2006 – Jan 2013
Software engineer at SecuTix in Genève, Switzerland
  • Involved in the GUI design, architecture and development of an easily customizable responsive online ticketshop for the SecuTix ticketing solution, used by several national and international event providers, fairs and music festivals such as the Opéra National de Paris, or the Consortium Stade de France.
  • Management of 4 developers.

JavaScript, CSS, HTML, PHP, ExtJS, JSP, Sass

May 2004 – Dec 2005
Software engineer at ELCA in Genève, Switzerland
  • Development of ELCA’s Cont’n’Shop 5 Content Management System.
  • Crafting the website of the Paléo Festival Nyon for 2 consecutive years.

JavaScript, CSS, HTML, PHP, Java, JSP

Education

1999 – 2004
Master degree in Computer Science at Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) in Lausanne, Switzerland

Master’s thesis: Autonomous car driving in a virtual city. Development of a Virtual Reality environment for learning to drive a car through a city with traffic signals and pedestrians.

2001 – 2002
Exchange student for 2 semesters at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in Pittsburgh, USA

Notable project: Building Virtual Worlds at the Entertainment Technology Center (ETC). Teams of 4 students accomplish 5 interdisciplinary projects to explore the possibilities and push the limits of Virtual Reality by creating immersive 3 dimensional worlds.

Skills

Non-technical
Continuous delivery, continuous integration, code review, project management, quality assurance, software architecture, software maintenance, unit/integration/e2e testing
★★★
System design, information security, pair programming
★★☆
Languages
CSS, HTML, JavaScript, TypeScript
★★★
Java, PHP
★★☆
Frameworks
React, Vue
★★★
Backbone, JSF, JSP
★★☆
Libraries
Auth0, Chromatic, deck.gl, ESLint, Faker JS, Flow, Headless UI, i18next, Jest, luma.gl, Mapbox GL JS, MSW, Nx, OpenAPI, PixiJS, Prettier, React Router, React Spectrum, Sass, Semantic Release, Semantic UI, Storybook, Tailwind CSS, TanStack Query, Testing Library, Turf JS, Vite, Vitest
★★★
Express, ExtJS, Koa, Redux, Sequelize, Zustand
★★☆
Infrastructure
GitHub, GitLab, npm, pnpm
★★★
Firebase, NextJS, NodeJS, Renovate
★★☆
Docker, Helm, Kubernetes, Terraform
★☆☆
Software
JIRA, Visual Studio Code
★★★
Confluence, Figma, IntelliJ IDEA
★☆☆
AI tooling
Prompt engineering
★★☆
Agentic development
★☆☆
Databases
MongoDB, MySQL, PostgreSQL
★★☆

Languages

French, English, German, Swiss German
Native or bilingual proficiency

Hobbies

Riding BMX, mountain bike, road/gravel; bike trail building; playing video games; going to punk shows

References

ZF SCALAR, Archilogic, Bestmile, Doodle, Krick, SecuTix & ELCA