About Rafał Kondratowicz
Hi there 👋
I'm a lead software engineer at Kainos , based in Gdańsk. I spend most of my time building software, teaching others how to build it better, and figuring out where AI fits into all of that without making us worse engineers.
For years I avoided public speaking and writing, convinced my ideas weren't original enough or that someone more qualified had already said it better. Then I realized those fears were rooted in assumptions, not facts. I started this blog to practice what I preach: progress over perfection .
These days I'm less loyal to any single language or framework and more interested in choosing the right tool for the job — then documenting what I learned so you don't have to stumble through the same experiments. I share what works, what doesn't, and the messy middle in between.
What I write about
- Software architecture Designing systems that are maintainable, testable, and honest about their trade-offs. Recently exploring how Clean, Hexagonal, and Onion architecture principles overlap in practice.
- Developer experience Small improvements that compound — from structured logging in Java to tooling choices that remove friction from daily work.
- Teaching in an AI-first world Lessons from running an AI-First engineering academy — what actually works when onboarding new developers who've never known a world without LLMs.
- AI-augmented workflows Experimenting with how to use LLMs without outsourcing our thinking — spec-driven development, instruction files, and knowing when to just write the code yourself.
A bit of background
I've been building software professionally for over a decade, mostly in the Java ecosystem, though these days I reach for whatever language solves the problem best. I've worked across the stack — from frontend applications to backend services — and learned that the hardest problems are rarely technical; they're about communication, clarity, and knowing what to build in the first place.
In 2025 I led the engineering portion of Kainos' AI-First Technologist Academy in Belfast, a six-week intensive program for early-career developers. It reshaped how I think about teaching, learning, and the future of our craft. The apprentices taught me as much as I taught them — especially about curiosity, skepticism, and the fundamentals that don't change no matter how good the tools get.
Reach me
The best way to get in touch is through LinkedIn . You can also find me on GitHub where I occasionally open-source experiments like my structured logging demo .