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Rafael Fuchs
DE

B.Sc. Computer Science · DevOps & Full-stack · rose, Aachen · Munich

Rafael Fuchs

I get data out of systems that don’t want to give it up.

At rose I own integrations with patient management systems (PMS) – from reverse-engineering their databases to the finished dashboard – and help build the platform behind them. By night I build reefnotes and, admittedly, another aquarium.

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Rafael Fuchs smiling in a dark t-shirt – black and white portrait
aka foxigit

01Strengths

What I’m really good at

since 2006

DevOps & operations

Servers that simply keep running: set up, automated, monitored and, when things are on fire, rescued. First at a dental company and for my own hosting clients, today for a cloud platform and a Raspberry Pi fleet in dental practices.

  • Linux since 2006
  • 15 years of IT administration at a dental company
  • 6 years of my own web and mail hosting
  • rose infrastructure fully as code: Terraform, migrated to OpenTofu, and Ansible – led and built by me
  • PostgreSQL HA with replication, pooler and pgBackRest; monitoring with Netdata, Loki and Grafana

Integrations of every kind

Getting systems to talk

When two systems refuse to talk to each other, I make them – via REST and partner APIs, message brokers or straight inside the database nobody is supposed to touch.

  • Many PMS integrations – by reverse-engineering the database or via the API: CGM Z1, Evident, Claire, DENTPORT, charly
  • External interfaces such as Doctolib – I built the sync from scratch
  • Messaging between services with BullMQ and Redis Streams

≈ 53,000 lines of SQL

Data & SQL

Messy vendor databases turned into a clean data model – with T-SQL and PostgreSQL, CTE pipelines, window functions and a lot of query tuning. Verified against real data, not against hope.

02Work

What I’m building

Day job · since 2020

rose · Code owner of many PMS integrations

Software by dentists, for dentists. I make the data locked inside the practices’ PMS visible and useful for practice teams – and help run the platform it all runs on. Started out as the SQL specialist, today code owner for areas such as the Z1, Evident and Claire integrations.

  • at rose since 2020
  • ≈ 8,000 commits
  • ≈ 53,000 lines of SQL

Patient management systems (PMS)

  • CGM Z1
  • Evident
  • Claire
  • DENTPORT
  • charly

External interfaces

  • Doctolib

appointment and patient sync, built from scratch

What I built and co-own

  • Reverse-engineered the databases of several PMS (SQL Server, Firebird, REST) into incremental pipelines feeding one unified PostgreSQL model.
  • A second-generation importer whose extraction SQL is generated from a declarative YAML spec – verified table by table against the legacy importer before the switch-over.
  • Dental domain logic in code and SQL: findings to a caries index, fee-schedule point values, treatment-plan lifecycles.
  • The Doctolib sync from scratch: a signed partner API client, delta processing of the data exports and patient matching that also finds fuzzy hits – privacy-preserving via hashes.
  • Rebuilt the job and messaging architecture: BullMQ and Redis Streams in production – after a RabbitMQ prototype in 2023, fitting my bachelor thesis.
  • The entire infrastructure as code: Terraform, later migrated to OpenTofu, and Ansible with a plan/apply pipeline in GitLab – led, built and maintained by me.
  • Running the Raspberry Pi fleet in the practices: zero-touch provisioning, remote access, unattended OS upgrades with a rescue path.
  • Observability with Netdata, Loki and Grafana – all the way down to the devices in the practices.
  • TypeScript
  • Node.js
  • Vue
  • PostgreSQL
  • SQL Server
  • Firebird
  • REST
  • Terraform
  • Ansible
  • Grafana
Visit rose.dental

My own product · since 2026

reefnotes

The free aquarium logbook that forecasts your water parameters. Tests, water changes, dosing and tasks in one place – plus a trend line that knows your water-change rhythm. Built solo, contract-first, hosted in Germany, no ads.

  • Vue 3
  • PrimeVue
  • Express 5
  • Prisma
  • PostgreSQL
  • Zod / OpenAPI
  • Playwright
reefnotes: nitrate over the last 14 days with forecast and likely range
Visit reefnotes.com

Also

  • Websites for clients – from holiday flats to restaurants.
  • My own small fleet of Linux servers at Hetzner: web, mail, analytics – all self-run.
  • Small contributions to node-firebird, the Firebird driver for Node.js.

03In practice

Three cases from operations

  1. 2026

    Moving the main database – on a Monday evening

    The central PostgreSQL database now runs highly available on a Patroni/etcd cluster across two data-centre locations. After that I moved the client databases to PostgreSQL 18 and pooled their connections with pgBouncer – step by step from staging via a pilot to the whole fleet.

    • Patroni
    • etcd
    • PostgreSQL 18
    • pgBouncer
    • OpenTofu
    • Ansible

  2. since 2024

    Backups you can actually restore

    pgBackRest with a dedicated backup host, an encrypted copy in object storage and a separate machine for restore tests. Reports arrive automatically by email and in Slack – so nobody discovers a gap only when things go wrong.

    • pgBackRest
    • Object storage
    • Restore tests
    • Netdata

  3. 2026

    Taking a Raspberry Pi fleet to 64 bit

    Worked out feasibility and cost, built a new 64-bit image with cloud-init and organised the card swap so each practice’s secret moves to the new SD card with one click in the admin UI.

    • Raspberry Pi
    • arm64
    • cloud-init
    • Ansible
    • Zero-touch

04Path

How I got here

  1. since 2021

    DevOps & full-stack engineer · rose GmbH

    From SQL specialist on the first practice integration, via full-stack, to code owner of many areas such as Z1, Evident and Claire – plus infrastructure and the Pi fleet.

  2. since 2026

    Founder & developer · reefnotes

    Idea, design, code, operations and marketing – all in one pair of paws.

  3. 2021

    Frontend developer · hotelkit GmbH

    Sent Bower into retirement: moved the AngularJS mobile app to Yarn, decluttered the Grunt build and got the pipeline green again. Then built new group labels – with colours that stay readable automatically thanks to chroma.js.

  4. 2020–2021

    Database developer (internship semester) · rose GmbH

    Built the CGM Z1 integration on my own: reverse-engineered its MS SQL database and wrote the queries that turn the data into something importable.

  5. 2017–2023

    B.Sc.Bachelor of Science

    B.Sc. Computer Science · Hochschule Landshut

    Bachelor thesis

    “Optimizing communication in distributed systems using message brokers”

    Analysed the requirements, compared brokers, built a RabbitMQ prototype: looser coupling, simpler communication, better scalability.

  6. 2017–2023

    Founder · foxigit

    My own IT business, which paid my way through university: Linux servers, websites, web and mail hosting for companies. Today foxigit is my alter ego.

  7. since 2011

    IT systems administration & coordination · Zahnklinik Mühldorf am Inn

    15 years and a role that grew with me: networking with Cisco, security with Sophos, monitoring with Nagios – today mostly coordinating between the clinic team and external IT providers.

Before that: aircraft mechanic on engines, with the German armed forces and at MTU Aero Engines – also systems that simply have to keep running. Linux since 2006, Gentoo, as an intern at GPORTAL. And at the very start: a 166 MHz box from Aldi and the screech of a dial-up modem – I’ve been allergic to awful noises ever since.

05Stack

What I work with

Infra & ops
  • Linux since 2006
  • Debian / Ubuntu
  • Hetzner Cloud
  • Terraform / OpenTofu
  • Ansible
  • Docker
  • GitLab CI
  • nginx
  • Grafana
  • Loki
  • Tempo
  • OpenTelemetry
  • Netdata
  • Nagios
  • Networking: Cisco, Sophos
  • PostgreSQL-HA & pgBackRest
  • Caddy
  • systemd
  • Bash
  • cloud-init
  • Raspberry Pi
Integrations, backend & data
  • SQL: CTEs, Window Functions
  • PostgreSQL
  • SQL Server / T-SQL
  • Firebird
  • Node.js
  • Express
  • Sequelize
  • RabbitMQ / AMQP
  • BullMQ / Redis Streams
  • Redis
  • REST APIs
  • Partner APIs
  • HMAC signing
  • Python / pandas
Frontend
  • TypeScript
  • Vue 2 & 3
  • Vuetify
  • Vuex / Pinia
  • AG Grid
  • Highcharts
  • Angular
  • Pug
  • SCSS
  • Tailwind
Languages
  • German – native
  • English – fluent

≈ 9,700 commits since 2019 – counted across all my repos.

06Offside

When the laptop is closed

  • Aquariums

    A 160-litre planted tank with CO₂ and a 10-litre nano. Without them there would be no reefnotes.

  • Citrus trees

    Kaffir lime, lemon, orange, calamondin – I just like it sour. Balcony in summer, living room in winter. Since 2026 with moisture sensors and a small dashboard: my playground for hardware and AI-assisted building.

Two snails work at reefnotes, Manfred and Stormy. I’m the fox who makes the coffee.

07Contact

Just write me.

Email is fastest – for a chat, a question or just to say hi. LinkedIn works too.

hifoxigitcom

foxigit.com and rafaelfuchs.de – two addresses, one fox.