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cben.dev

cben.dev

About me

Christian Benthake

I am Chris, 30 years old, a senior software engineer and freelancer as well as a digital nomad, with an emphasis on PHP backend development.

Alongside the work I do for my clients, I am involved in the open source community: writing translations, fixing bugs, building features, and working on private projects of my own.

A few years ago I began to question how I work, and realised how much travelling the world means to me. That is how I became a digital nomad, and I currently live in Japan, in Kanagawa Prefecture, and mostly work from here.

This lifestyle brings a lot of travelling with it, meeting new people, new opportunities and cultures which has become my main hobby. It also means that much of my free time happens outdoors.

I love hiking, paragliding, simply being in the mountains or by the sea, and picking up new sports such as surfing. I also play handball in the local community.

My technology stack

I have worked with a wide range of technologies and tools so far, but with AI the ‘what’ matters far less, and the ‘how’ all the more.

PHP
SymfonyLaravelPimCoreTYPO3WordPressPHPUnitCodeceptioninfectionPsalmphpstanrectorxdebug
JavaScript / TypeScript
ReactVuealpinejsbootstrap
Rust
dioxustauritui-rs
Dart
FlutteriOSAndroid
Others
MySQL/MSSQLBashCC#
DevOps
dockerhetzner cloudawsazurenginxapachegitlabbitbucketgithub

Tools

Development
JetBrainsZed
AI
LumoClaude CodeGemini
Version control
gitlabgithubbitbucket
OS
CachyOSMacOS
Project management
JiraTrello
Languages
GermanEnglishFrenchJapanese

Timeline

  1. 2025

    Went full-time freelance

  2. 2025

    StuttgartHadano

    Arrived in February

  3. 2024

    Started travelling as a digital nomad

  4. since 2023

    easybill GmbH

    • Rebuilding the UI piece by piece into an entirely new design with modern technologies (React, ShadCN, Tailwind, TanStack)
    • New features: onboarding, incoming invoices, interfaces to external providers
    • Mainly backend PHP development: features and maintenance in a Symfony environment

  5. 2021–2023

    eCentral GmbH (fgtclb)

    Senior Software Engineer

    • Designed the architecture for and implemented DAM integrations, including a FAL driver for TYPO3
    • Provisioned development environments with automated SSL certificates and server infrastructure
    • Built and extended websites and interfaces with TYPO3, PimCore, Symfony and WordPress
    • Frontend development with React and Vue/TypeScript, tested with Cypress
    • Mentored colleagues, particularly in PHP and TYPO3

  6. 2021

    KielStuttgart

  7. 2020

    StuttgartKiel

  8. 2017–2021

    anders und sehr GmbH (Pluswerk AG)

    (Backend) Web Developer

    • Designed and built interfaces along with import and export pipelines
    • Created development environments with Docker
    • Built and connected search indices to various CMS platforms
    • Developed new websites with TYPO3 and PimCore
    • Performance tuning and QA of web applications
    • Implemented frontend applications with Vue/TypeScript among others

  9. 2014–2017

    audius AG

    Dual study programme, software development

    • Learned C# and MSSQL
    • Extended the Dashface product
    • Cost-benefit analysis of several mapping systems for Dashface

  10. 2014–2017

    Duale Hochschule Baden-Württemberg

    Applied Computer Science, Bachelor of Science

  11. 2014

    East FrisiaStuttgart

  12. 2013

    First project as a freelance web developer

  13. 1996

    East Frisia

    Born in a small town in East Frisia