Eric Trenkel — Senior Software Engineer & IT Consultant

01 About

I've been building software for over 10 years — my first public projects went up on GitHub in 2016, and my oldest still-maintained one, the Telegram Support Bot, has been running since 2017. For the past five-plus years I've done it professionally: in logistics integration by day, and as the developer of open-source tools people actually use on the side.

At NEOZO I've spent three years in one continuous engagement in the carrier and transport-management space of an international logistics provider — delivering applications spanning bookings, sailing schedules and shipment status processing, along with shared libraries used across projects. A few months in, I took on the tech lead role for a team of six developers, and I've owned the architecture decisions in my project scope ever since. The most interesting problems live at the edges: heterogeneous data sources with unreliable quality, matching without unambiguous identifiers, and integrating modern microservices into a grown legacy landscape.

In parallel I build and commercially distribute my own developer tools — including the WSL Manager (Microsoft Store) and a support bot that also runs as a hosted service. 60+ releases, several major migrations and an active community have taught me more about architecture decisions and their long-term consequences than any whiteboard. I occasionally write about technical topics at senpai.club.

My background is in computer engineering (FH Aachen University of Applied Sciences, bachelor thesis graded 1.0 on the architecture modernization of a production system).

02 Experience

Jan 2025 — today

Senior Software Engineer & IT Consultant

NEOZO · Cologne

Technical lead and main point of contact for a long-running project at an international logistics provider, covering carrier applications and integration with the client's transport management landscape.
Own the architecture decisions within my project scope, from integration concepts through data processing logic to error handling.
Designed and built a status application that consolidates shipment data from heterogeneous carrier sources and manually entered TMS records into reliable status information from a freight forwarder's perspective — including data cleanup and matching logic for cases where carriers provide no unambiguous identifier (air and ocean).
Designed the ingestion path around Kafka as a buffering and throttling layer for high-volume inbound data.
Integrated a legacy transport management system via EDI, including development on the PL/SQL side.
Replaced fragmented document handling with a central document service backed by S3 — over 80,000 documents processed in the first two weeks.
Delivered applications spanning bookings, sailing schedules and status processing, working closely with product management, QA and business stakeholders.
Maintain and extend shared libraries used across projects, including integration of a new permission model.

JavaKotlinSpring BootKafkaPL/SQLEDIS3Freemarker

Jul 2023 — Jan 2025

Software Engineer & IT Consultant

NEOZO · Cologne

Tech Lead (late 2023 – April 2024): technical lead for a team of six developers, responsible for architecture decisions and code quality.
Designed the database schema and internal data structures underlying the carrier applications.
Built the ingestion process for provider data — retrieving files from SFTP endpoints, transforming them into the internal data model, and notifying the target system across five globally distributed instances.
Delivered custom software for an international logistics provider from concept through to deployment, connecting modern services to established legacy platforms.

JavaKotlinSpring BootSQL

Jan 2021 — today

Founder & Application Developer

Bostrot · self-employed

Founder of Bostrot, developing and commercially distributing developer tools with a combined 5,000+ GitHub stars and an active user community.
WSL Manager — a Flutter/Dart GUI for managing WSL2 environments with 154,000+ downloads, shipped through the Microsoft Store, Winget, Scoop and Chocolatey, localized into 9 languages, with a built-in MCP server for AI agents such as Claude Desktop.
Telegram & Signal Support Bot — a TypeScript ticketing system with Docker deployment, also operated as a hosted commercial service.
PowerToys Run Winget Plugin — a C# plugin for Microsoft PowerToys enabling package search and installation.
Published reusable open-source packages on pub.dev, including a Plausible Analytics client and a chunked downloader for Dart/Flutter.
Own the full product lifecycle across all projects: architecture, implementation, release management, distribution, community support and monetization.

DartTypeScriptC#DockerCI/CDGitHub ActionsOpen Source

Jul 2021 — Jun 2023

Student Software Engineer & IT Tutor

FH Aachen · part-time

Engineered and maintained backend infrastructure for production teaching systems used across lab courses, improving the architecture and code quality of a Jenkins-based CI submission system and the MoniTutor feedback platform.
Built a cross-platform CI/CD pipeline (Windows, Linux, macOS on x86 and ARM) delivering a portable, preconfigured VS Code C++ toolchain, plus a custom VS Code extension that simplified lab assignment workflows for first-year students.
Bachelor thesis (grade 1.0): architecture modernization of MoniTutor — migrated the core client from Python to Rust, substantially improving runtime performance, memory footprint and stability. Deployed to production lab courses immediately after completion.
Mentored first-year students in C++ and core computer science concepts as a programming tutor.

RustCI/CDC++PythonJenkins

Oct 2020 — Mar 2021

Teaching Assistant — C++

FH Aachen · part-time, on site

Mentored first-semester computer science students in foundational programming concepts and C++.
Ran the departmental Q&A tutorial, answering technical questions from computer science students as well as students from other engineering programs.
Reviewed student code and guided hands-on debugging sessions.

C++Teaching

03 Open Source

Curated highlights below; the grid underneath is generated from the live GitHub API by a scheduled pipeline — no JavaScript fetches, just commits.

WSL Manager

A Flutter/Dart GUI for managing WSL2 environments. 62+ releases shipped through the Microsoft Store, Winget, Scoop and Chocolatey, backed by a GitHub Actions CI/CD pipeline and localized into 9 languages. Includes a built-in MCP server exposing WSL environments to AI agents such as Claude Desktop, remote management over SSH, and running Docker images as WSL instances without a Docker installation.

154,364 downloads · 62 releases · latest v1.11.0 (2026-04-03)

FlutterDartMCPCI/CDMicrosoft Store

wslmanager.com ↗Microsoft Store ↗GitHub ↗

3,966 177

Dart

Telegram & Signal Support Bot

A TypeScript ticketing system with Docker deployment, Jest test coverage and SonarQube analysis, including optional LLM-based auto-responses. Survived several major migrations — including a full bot framework replacement — while preserving backward compatibility for existing deployments. Also operated as a hosted commercial service.

15 releases · latest 5.0.0-rc.4 (2025-08-21) · 5,582 Docker pulls

TypeScriptDockerJestSonarQubeLLM

GitHub ↗

610 202

TypeScript

PowerToys Run Winget Plugin

A C# plugin for Microsoft PowerToys enabling package search and installation straight from the PowerToys Run launcher.

12,249 downloads · 9 releases · latest v1.3.0 (2024-05-30)

C#.NETPowerToysWinget

GitHub ↗

335 17

C#

More repositories

flutter_android_pip

Simple Flutter plugin for Android picture in picture mode.

Dart

14 14

flutter_plausible_analytics

Plausible Analytics for Flutter as a Dart package.

Dart

12 7

flutter_repo_wiki

A Flutter docs and pub wiki with a notifier for new versions.

Dart

12 0

cloudflare-stream-uploader

A NodeJS Cloudflare Stream uploader.

JavaScript

10 1

wsl-scripts

9 11

steam_keys_activator

A JS script to activate multiple Steam keys automatically.

JavaScript

6 1

chunked_downloader

Dart downloader with customizable chunk/buffer size

Dart

5 1

RustyFS

RustyFS is a minimal multithreading file server written in Rust, inspired by the Rust example. It allows for easy and efficient file sharing between clients and servers through its multi-threaded architecture. With RustyFS, users can transfer files with ease while enjoying the speed and safety provided by the Rust programming language.

Rust

3 0

erics-container-repo

My docker containers in one place

Dockerfile

2 0

All repositories on GitHub →

Also elsewhere: 6,101 Stack Overflow reputation · 2,089 pub.dev downloads/month · 41k Docker Hub pulls

04 Writing

Occasional technical notes at senpai.club — pulled in by the pipeline.

2026-05-03 Installing Atlas OS on Windows 11: A Guide for Proxmox VMs 2026-04-20 ESP8266 D1 Mini Clone + LD2450 with ESPHome: Presence Detection 2026-04-14 VS Code Remote SSH, Fish, and 1Password on Mac (Step by Step) 2025-03-16 Running LLMs Inside a Proxmox LXC with GPU Passthrough on UM 780 XTX

05 Education

B.Sc. Computer Engineering · FH Aachen University of Applied Sciences

Bachelor thesis (grade 1.0): “Architecture Modernization of MoniTutor: Client Migration from Python to Rust and Streamlining of Key System Components” — deployed to production university lab courses.

06 Contact

Have an interesting problem at the edges of your system landscape?

[email protected] LinkedIn Telegram CV (PDF)