GLOBE-CoP: Data Space Online Learning Platform
Full-Stack Developer & DevOps Engineer, GLOBE-STEAMSS, ACS-UPB
A cloud-native, Udemy-style learning marketplace (instructors publish HD courses and live webinars, learners get recommendations, forums and progress dashboards) deployed on Kubernetes (EKS/GKE) with full CI/CD and observability.
Problem
The GLOBE community of practice needed a scalable platform where instructors can upload and monetise courses, host webinars and build a community, with the reliability of a commercial marketplace.
Solution
A Node.js/Express REST core with Python/Flask micro-services (auth, payments, recommendations), hybrid PostgreSQL/MySQL + MongoDB storage, real-time community features over WebSockets, containerised and deployed with Helm on EKS/GKE.
My contribution
- Built the responsive frontend (ES6+, SASS, Flexbox/Grid) with search, enrolment, playlists and in-browser HLS video playback.
- Designed the backend: Node/Express REST APIs plus Flask micro-services for auth, Stripe/PayPal payments and recommendations, secured with JWT; RBAC for Admin/Instructor/Student.
- Dockerised every service and deployed with Helm to EKS/GKE; GitHub Actions and Jenkins pipelines build, scan and test (Jest, pytest, Selenium) and push signed images.
- Terraform (VPCs, subnets, ALBs, auto-scaling groups) and Ansible; multi-AZ, Let's Encrypt auto-TLS, OWASP ZAP scans, least-privilege IAM and WAF rate limits.
- ELK logging, Prometheus/Grafana dashboards with SLO-aligned alerts; CloudFront CDN, Redis caching and Locust/JMeter load tests.
- Full-Stack Developer, front end to cloud: React and Angular front ends in TypeScript and JavaScript, NestJS and Express APIs, shipped as containers to Kubernetes on AWS and Azure, with Terraform, GitOps (Argo CD), GitHub Actions CI/CD, security scanning and observability
Stack
Node.js
Express
Python
Flask
JavaScript
HTML5
CSS3
Sass
PostgreSQL
MySQL
MongoDB
Redis
JWT
WebSockets
Docker
Kubernetes
Helm
Terraform
Ansible
AWS
Google Cloud
GitHub Actions
Jenkins
Jest
pytest
Selenium
Locust
JMeter
ELK Stack
Prometheus
Grafana
NGINX
CloudFront
Swagger / OpenAPI
Webpack
OWASP ZAP
React
Angular
TypeScript
NestJS
Argo CD
Microsoft Azure
Cloudflare
OpenTelemetry
Trivy
PlaywrightLinks
Features
Instructors upload HD courses, schedule live webinars, add quizzes and resources; students get recommendations and progress dashboards. Community layer: discussion forums, threaded comments, private messages, study groups and real-time notifications over WebSockets.
Architecture
- Frontend: modern JavaScript (ES6+), responsive CSS (Flexbox/Grid, SASS), HLS playback in the browser.
- Backend: Node.js/Express RESTful core; Python/Flask micro-services for authentication, payments (Stripe/PayPal) and the recommendation engine; JWT security; Swagger/OpenAPI documentation.
- Data: PostgreSQL/MySQL for catalogue, purchases and analytics; MongoDB for forum content; Redis cache for sessions and leaderboards.
DevOps
- Docker images for every service; Helm releases to AWS EKS and GCP GKE.
- GitHub Actions + Jenkins pipelines: build, scan, unit/integration/e2e tests (Jest, pytest, Selenium), signed images to registries.
- Terraform-defined VPCs, subnets, ALBs and ASGs; Ansible configuration; multi-AZ with Let's Encrypt automatic TLS, OWASP ZAP scans, least-privilege IAM and WAF rate limits.
- ELK logs, Prometheus metrics, Grafana dashboards and Slack/email alerts aligned to SLOs; CloudFront CDN and indexed queries for performance.
