Proficient in Python and lately seasoned with some TypeScript, Robot Framework & Go, I like designing systems and tackling challenges requiring removing "im" from impossible.
I've been in love with Python and its ecosystem since 2007 and in the past 11+ professional years I've worked with:
Companies
- Robocorp (open-source RPA)
- Gorgias (eCommerce support automation)
- Comfy (IoTs & smart buildings)
- iMedicare (health insurance recommendation)
- Cloudbase Solutions (IaaS & DevOps)
- Bitdefender (web & desktop security)
Startups
- Sema4.ai (AI-driven automation)
- ArcanaBio (DNA sequencing)
- Fashwell (computer vision)
- TeqHire (outsourcing talents)
- 47farms (food marketplace)
- Reckon Digital (hardware testing)
Even tried it on my own, beginning with a strong team and a brilliant idea as TrueStory.
I'm mainly interested in growing multifunctional cohesive autonomous teams in remote-first async setups, as a senior backend/solutions/lead engineer moving the needle. Ranging from RPA, desktop apps and web services to any kind of process automation and ETL infused with AI, while I have an urge for clean code. Expressing great interest towards the founder mode, with genuine leadership influence and people management responsibilities.
Find out more in my CV
Experience: 11 years
Yearly salary: $126,000
Hourly rate: $70
Nationality: 🇷🇴 Romania
Residency: 🇷🇴 Romania
Experience
Software Engineering Lead
Sema4AI 2023 - 2024
As a cohesive team of 5 Python engineers, we established the foundation of running AI Actions through OpenGPT-powered Agents. At the core of the framework, there's a server built over FastAPI capable of discovering packages exposing actions to be run locally in isolation. The 'meat' of these actions is pure Python logic which operates over both internal and external resources. Bridged the product with the engineering side by managing a Linear project dealing with the creation of pre-made actions, wrapping services like Google, Slack, HubSpot and operating on local documents. Written technical documents helping with issue scoping and designed the OAuth2 flow affecting our products. Improved the DX of library work and its migration from RPA to native Python automation. People management: hiring interview code challenge design, 360 reviews, 1on1 proactive feedback, new hires onboarding, team autonomy & trust empowerment. Held talks about our development tools and Python automation to wider external audiences. Managed to interview and hire some of the best fits at that time, while assembling a subteam focusing around Python development and CI/CD best practices for package releasing. Experienced growth on the management side by diminishing friction, nurture autonomy and keeping the roadmap in sync with the volatile nature of the product. This was a full rebrand of myself aligning with the acquisition of Robocorp by Sema4AI.
Senior Software Engineer
Robocorp 2021 - 2023
Giving everyone the opportunity to harness the power of open-source automation through a set of developer tools and Python libraries making it easy to grasp. Developed a set of RPA libraries written in Python, used under Robot Framework automation scripts involving: intelligent document processing, API wrappers, browser (Selenium), desktop (OCR), Windows, email with OAuth2 and PDF automation. PyPI package development and dependency management with cloud-based integration testing coverage. Contributed to a public gallery of use-case driven examples employing our tools. Fully committed in customer support threads and calls in order to understand and fix what burns the most, thus ensuring our company's growth and success. Suffered a powerful seniority upgrade & consolidation by improving my RPA skills, alongside communication, prioritization, impact and empathy. Focusing on the essential with an attention to detail is key. Blended into the company culture and transformed its core values into virtues.
Senior Software Engineer
Gorgias 2021 - 2021
At Gorgias everything is going fast and based on data. You need to stay agile while getting quickly to 'no' when facing decisions that will impact the project long-term. Finding your focus and holding the line on multiple fronts is an art, one that wins you a partner or a client over the competition. And the main vision here is to become no. 1 on Shopify while helping as many people as possible through our e-commerce helpdesk. Growing and leading the Developer Experience team while helping our partners and external developers integrate better with Gorgias. Laying the tech foundation of an App Store with OAuth2 support where developers can publish and monetize their own apps inside of Gorgias. Improving our REST API and docs with a startup mindset and leadership good practices. Thought I met the culture, processes and transparency I was looking for, but everyone's no. 1 focus was just the customer impact & support.
Tech Lead
Comfy 2019 - 2020
As a leader in smart buildings, this new IoTs unicorn is giving me the opportunity to lead by example in a startup vibe environment, by taking technical and team crucial decisions. My mission here is to help Comfy innovate the way we move and feel at work. Some of our partners automated through us square kilometers of campuses. Establishing the architecture and code layout for a new set of micro-services dealing with numerous sensor-based events using Go and Python with Django. Getting familiar with Google's gRPC protocol buffers, under a grpc-gateway reverse proxy transcoder and service implementors in Python 3. Working on a Mapbox compliant API with its business logic implemented at database level using PostGIS. Ensuring everyone in the team knows how and what to do through proactive communication and effective mutual help. Dynamically juggling with priorities in order to meet client's SLA and deliverables deadlines. Seen from start to finish how it feels to be acquired by a big corporation and merged with multi-timezone/culture teams.
Software Engineer
Fashwell 2018 - 2018
Helping the ML team on leveraging our main vision: image detection of fashion apparel and furniture in milliseconds. On a daily basis I'm planning, developing and deploying new features and components for the API services and current infrastructure. Mainly improving Python web apps with Kubernetes running in Google Cloud. Adding customizable rate limit support for all exposed endpoints, based on Redis and good intentions. Creating a bot for analyzing user statistics in order to generate and display engaging reports. Global code refactoring, Python 2 to 3, various fixes and overall quality assurance. Increased service reliability by properly controlling clients' API requests, while fixing bugs & coupling on the authentication side. Improved my knowledge and skills together with a wonderful team.
Back End Developer
ArcanaBio 2018 - 2019
Under this new startup emerged from TeqHire, I'm walking along the adventurous road of risks and uncertainty of accurately detecting organisms in samples. Together with its CEO, we've glued and kept aligned a family of team players, from whom I learned to take responsibilities, communicate better and face the client with success. DNA sequencing and PCR automation involving Blast and Primer around NCBI ecosystem. Async programming in Python 3 with aio* libraries under exotic ASGI frameworks. Pivoted from full-time dev to part-time lead, managing brainstorms, tasks, planning and documentation.
Full Stack Developer
47FARMS 2016 - 2016
Alongside the most altruistic entrepreneur in Princeton, I'm on a mission to enable access to local and healthier food for all communities by harnessing technology innovation to build local and regional food systems. We revolutionize the food and groceries buying system by successfully implementing restaurant, school and hospital programs through which people can buy and eat healthy food from their local producers. Developing and maintaining the 47farms.com website using the webapp2 framework under Google Cloud PaaS. Allowing parents to order and schedule school lunches for their children across the whole week. Supporting individual small clients to unite and become wholesale buyers through our platform. Implementing recurring orders, custom pricing techniques and various payment options. Qualified for a pitch regarding the mission above at the Wolves Summit conference and obtained consistent grants from the state, while learning some key aspects about business in general and why diplomacy and discipline always win.
Python DevOps
TeqHire 2016 - 2018
Here I am the one-man army. While had the chance to also work in small teams, I developed a strong professional relationship with the Co-Founders, thing which led me to a whole new set of responsibilities and trust, under which I propose, set and manage tasks on my own, then research, develop, test, deploy, maintain and document features that accomplish business' needs. Developing a fully fledged web application written in Flask with App Engine, capable of categorizing people's public professional related information with the goal of matching them to accurate and suitable job positions. Creating an Elastic Search ML component for the service above with data post-processing and analytics intentions. Aggregating and centralizing end-user financial data from different enrolled banks into one desired central service. Augmenting video streaming with live data extracted automatically from the most popular poker platform in the world, using smart OCR and text prediction algorithms. Built connections with some of the brightest minds around the globe and got in touch with role model entrepreneurs and CEOs.
Operational Researcher
Reckon Digital 2016 - 2016
I'm taking General Electric to the next level by working on a back-end service used to automatically schedule wind power plants tests. Moving and testing massive engines from one workbench to another is an expensive job, therefore we cut the costs by digitally scheduling the entire process. Developing, testing and deploying the test planner service on Linux machines while creating a strong bond with the team. Made my first steps into Django web framework and strengthened my DevOps skills with the Fabric deployment tool.
Cloud Engineer
Cloudbase Solutions 2014 - 2015
We're joining forces with big clients like Microsoft and extending the OpenStack community by developing an open-source initialization service specially designed for Windows instances, called cloudbase-init. The pushed patches into open-source projects and focus on IaaS field are the side-tasks that spice-up the usual daily challenges. Creating new features for cloudbase-init by extending compatibility with different cloud services. Developing Argus, a complex testing framework which runs integration tests against cloudbase-init. Having a focus on OpenStack development and helping users around the world with deployment Q&As. Done my first international speech about the Argus framework at EuroPython and helped the company to establish a new team and office in Iasi city.
Malware Researcher
Bitdefender 2013 - 2014
I'm taking with honor the great responsibility of offering SaaS solutions for the no.1 antivirus company world-wide. Proudly being part of a large team, my main focus here is to meet our clients' needs by developing demanding and challenging projects regarding parallel data processing and NoSQL databases. DrLink: a service designed to crawl efficiently web apps, with a distributed scanning of threats and suspicious files. Scrappy: an advanced application scraper that can recover from its last state in case of a stop/crash, which runs on custom plugins. Rediscoll: a high level collection of basic Python data structures & OS locks, implemented as Redis abstractions. Curloxy: a proxy provider web service with the ability to search, parse and test proxies from multiple external sources. Done 'from zero to hero' rounds by writing from scratch the projects above all by myself, while being involved into other bigger ones and being taught at the same time the beauty of Python's dark corners by my coworkers. I held a presentation about Python exec / eval vulnerabilities at a local security conference.
Skills
agile
backend
bootstrap
c-plus-plus
docker
engineering-manager
gcp
golang
javascript
jira
jquery
nosql
remote
sql
tech-lead
typescript
python