Brief Synopsis:
Christopher Kujawa, a seasoned engineer at Camunda, has been making waves in the field of distributed systems, particularly in the areas of reliability, performance, and improving systems. He joined Camunda in 2016 and has since been instrumental in driving initiatives like reliability testing and Chaos Engineering.
Based in Berlin, Germany, Kujawa's work at Camunda has been marked by his intrinsic mindset and strong desire to learn and understand complex systems. He believes in a pragmatic approach, where perfection is not the goal, but continuous improvement is the key.
Kujawa has been working on improving the approach to reliability testing at Camunda. One of his notable contributions was the introduction of Chaos Engineering in 2019. This approach involves designing experiments that safely simulate failures, monitoring the system's behaviour under stress, and automating recovery procedures to validate the system's robustness.
In his opinion, great engineers in distributed systems work have an intrinsic mindset and a strong desire to learn and understand complex systems. Kujawa models this ambition, eagerness to learn, openness to feedback, and transparency in his work.
Kujawa's favorite debugging tools include JFR, async profiler, and VIM with jq. He also recommends books such as "The Pragmatic Programmer" by Andy Hunt and Dave Thomas, "Modern Software Engineering" by David Farley, and "Java Performance" by Scott Oaks.
Recently, Kujawa led a project to create a new Camunda Exporter. He was also part of bootstrapping the Zeebe project, which was an experiment at the time.
What excites Kujawa the most about his work is that every day is different, with new challenges to tackle and new things to learn. His personal mantra is: "There are no problems, only challenges, and every challenge is an opportunity to learn."
Camunda is currently looking for engineers who think in systems, get excited by hard problems, and care deeply about building tools that other developers love to use. Open roles can be explored on Camunda's website.
It's worth noting that the specific technical challenges that Camunda's Zeebe team is currently working on in the field of reliability testing and chaos engineering are not explicitly mentioned in the provided search results. However, in general, reliability testing challenges in Zeebe likely involve ensuring fault tolerance and resilience in distributed workflows, handling failures gracefully, and validating state consistency under load and failure scenarios. Chaos engineering challenges for Zeebe would typically include designing experiments that safely simulate failures (network partitions, node crashes), monitoring Zeebe’s behaviour under stress, and automating recovery procedures to validate the system’s robustness.
Kujawa's academic journey was not straightforward. As a child, he originally wanted to be a Policeman, but due to poor academic performance, he studied Applied Science and eventually found an interest in programming and Computer Science.
In conclusion, Christopher Kujawa's contributions at Camunda, particularly in the field of reliability testing and Chaos Engineering, have been instrumental in driving innovation and improving the resilience of distributed systems. His pragmatic approach, ambition, and eagerness to learn make him a valuable asset to the Camunda team and the broader tech community.
Technology plays a significant role in Christopher Kujawa's work at Camunda, as he uses various tools to debug and improve distributed systems, such as JFR, async profiler, VIM with jq, and recommends books like "The Pragmatic Programmer" and "Java Performance." Furthermore, he is currently leading a project centered around technology to create a new Camunda Exporter.
