Kamen Kanev

Software Engineer and Entrepreneur

Emphasis

Curious and open-minded individual, who is passionate about forming mental models for complex problems and developing solutions that have a social impact. Experienced in designing APIs, working on data-heavy applications, building processes, and managing people.

Technologies

React, Python, Ruby, GraphQL, PostgreSQL, NodeJS, RSpec, AWS, Capistrano

Professional Experience

Founder / Executive

April 2020 - September 2020 Bakalin BG

While building the e-grocery service from scratch, I developed expertise in various areas: Leadership, Negotiation, Product vision, UX, Logistics. I also got my hands dirty with new technologies: Django, Graphene, Celery, and Semantic UI. One of our biggest challenges keeping the team productive and motivated while dealing with a diverse workload. Here are some of my notable achievements:

• Managing a team of 5 highly skilled professionals
• Implementing agile practices in a fully remote team with a flexible work schedule
• Contributing to the Graphene API with functionality for batch product import
• Developing a quantity management system having up to 95% efficiency for matching client orders to in-stock products
• Making over 30 user interviews for validating product hypotheses

Team Lead

June 2019 - March 2020 Rifiniti, an FM:Systems Company

Working exclusively on Rails + GraphQL/NodeJS backed services running on AWS ECS infrastructure. A Major part of my work included solving complex database problems coming from the requirements for fast analysis(<0.5s) of time-series data(over 500 million rows) for custom time ranges. Part of my contribution is:

• Leading a team of 3 talented software engineers
• Optimizing the load time of the main page by more than 30%
• Speeding up the data deploys more than twice
• Improving local development drastically reducing feedback loops and utilizing Docker and Moto S3

Senior Full-Stack Web Developer

May 2017 - May 2019 ReceiptBank

Worked alongside the best Rubists in the country, maintaining a complex platform over Rails/GraphQL/Backbone/React tech stack. A key aspect of my job was, balancing between what’s desired, from the clients’ point of view, and what’s reasonable from the technological side. It was a process of following the best agile practices, keeping short feedback loops, and writing durable code - all that while working fully remote. Some of my notable achievements are:

• Being part of an agile cross-functional team and delivering advanced features for top tear clients
• Doing zero-downtime migrations over tenths of millions of rows
• Being part of a GDPR deletion functionality in a system with over 80 database tables
• Completing multiple refactorings of business-critical UI components

Full-Stack Web Developer

June 2016 - May 2017 Tradeo

Stepping in a more responsible position, I started managing people and shifted focus towards the NodeJS backend services. My noticeable achievements are:

• Building from scratch in-house Content Management System as a Head developer using Rails/BackboneJS
• Starting a green-field micro-service in NodeJS utilizing ZMQ communication

Junior Full-Stack Web Developer

July 2015 - June 2016 Tradeo

Starting as a novice with mostly academic knowledge, I had the pleasure of working under the mentorship of the CTO Bozhidar Batsov. Working primarily on a Rails/Backbone/React tech stack. I took most of the offered mentorship and managed to make my way to interesting and challenging tasks:

• Refactoring of central/business-critical React components in the most dynamic part of the platform
• Extending the payment system with a brand new payment provider

Open-source

Google Keep File Sync written in Python | Poker engine - functional game logic library | Dalek - configuration first deletion utility

Education

2013-∞ Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics, Sofia University, Bulgaria

2008-2013 School of Mathematics and Nature sciences, Haskovo, Bulgaria

• Graduated as Mathematician of class 2013
• Taking 1st place on over 6 regional mathematics olympiads over the years
• Taking twice 5th place on the national mathematics competitions

Strengths

Engineering I’m good at finding the balance between a minimalistic mindset and efficient solutions.

Communication I listen, respect, and always try to understand the other person.

Remote culture I’ve been working remotely for a total of 4 years.