Harry Dobrev

Technology, Startups, Strategy

Software engineering manager with 14 years of experience in software and startups. Ex-CTO, managed engineers and managers for 6 years. Generalist, thinking about the whole product - from speed and simplicity for the end-user to the maintainability and re-usability of the code. I love open-source and I try to contribute back to the community on which we rely on.

Work

Percent

Engineering Manager
– Present

Percent allows you to quickly and easily build purpose into what you do. Percent runs the biggest nonprofit verification programmes and provides donation infrastructure.

  • Working on the Verifications product running the biggest nonprofit programmes in the world

  • Launched a dozen of new customers like Google, Microsoft, Canva and Atlassian

  • Grew the monthly volume of verifications 50 times

  • Acted as a technical contact for Verifications customers

  • Managed and coached engineers. Doubled the team over 2 years

  • Simplified Verifications API and introduced new automations

Uber

Sr Software Engineer
–

Joined Uber Sofia Engineering team to grow more in the field of distributed systems.

  • Worked at the Fintech department at Uber in the Tax Invoices team.

  • Focused on e-invoicing and external integrators.

  • Acquired new skills in distributed engineering, Golang and Python.

Clippings (MaterialBank company)

Chief Architect
–

Clippings is a interior design platform for interior designers to discover products from the largest online catalogue and manage their interior design projects from inspiration to instalation. (Acquired by Material Bank in 2021)

  • Worked with external partners and customers on white-labeling the software.

  • Formed cross-team functional working groups within engineering department.

  • Worked with tech leads, engineering managers, product managers and stakeholders across multiple organisations.

CTO
–

Clippings is a interior design platform for interior designers to discover products from the largest online catalogue and manage their interior design projects from inspiratio to instalation.

  • Scaled the engineering team from 3 to 30 people.

  • Worked on strategy and objectives for the company through multiple pivots and evolutions of the business.

  • Participated in technical due diligence in investment rounds.

  • Guided the technology direction and budget in the business.

Software Engineer
–

Clippings is a interior design platform for interior designers to discover products from the largest online catalogue and manage their interior design projects from inspiratio to instalation.

  • I worked as a full-stack developer throughout the whole product.

  • Worked on transitioning the platform to the B2B business model.

  • Helped with recruitment.

  • Introduced new technologies in the stack.

Despark

Software Engineer
–

Worked on clients' projects like startups in UK, USA and marketing agencies in Bulgaria.

  • Worked with startup clients like OurLabel, TopLeagueFootball.

  • Developed the back-end of the award-winning AUBG website.

  • Done full-stack development with PHP/JavaScript/MySQL.

  • Introduced newer framework versions to the company projects.

  • Developed several Facebook apps for marketing clients in Bulgaria like IKEA, Becks and others.

TranSYS BG

Web Developer
–

Worked with clients in an agency on Joomla/PHP/JavaScript development and on-site SEO

  • Worked with clients in Bulgaria and United Kingdom on Joomla websites and SEO.

  • Headed the development of clients' projects with multiple developers.

  • Managed communication with external clients on some of the projects.

Volunteer

Yes, Bulgaria

Member, Activist
– Present

Part of an up and coming political party fighting for judical reforms and modernization of the country.

  • Worked on the back-end of the open-source TiBroish platform for more transparent elections in Bulgaria.

  • Helped with on-site SEO problems and security attacks against Wordpress website.

Tuk-Tam

Member
– Present

Tuk-Tam is a non-profit aiming to connect the Bulgarian diaspora throughout the world and helps students with stipends to study abroad.

Education

Software University "Svetlin Nakov"

Software Engineering
–

Bachelor

Courses

  • C# Basics

  • Java Basics

  • PHP Basics

  • JavaScript Basics

  • Web Fundamentals

  • Teamwork and Personal skills

  • Object Oriented Programming

  • Quality Code

  • JavaScript Advanced

  • JavaScript Applications

Sofia University "Kliment Ohridski"

Software Engineering
–

Bachelor

Courses

  • Linear Algebra

  • Calculus

  • Discrete structures

  • Object Oriented Programming

  • English

Mathematics High School "Konstantin Velichkov"

Informatics, Mathematics, English
–

High School

Courses

  • Informatics

  • Competitive Informatics

  • Information Technology

  • Mathematics

  • English

  • Physics

  • History

Projects

You Count (Ti Broish)

– Present

Open-source platform for fair elections in Bulgaria

  • Developed the whole platform back-end with NestJS

  • Successfully competed with the Central Elections Commission and pushed them to improve

  • Coordinated dozens of engineers working on infrastructure, backend, frontend and mobile

  • Worked with marketing, operations and legal

American University in Bulgaria website

–

Developed backend of AUBG with a custom CMS for the university needs

  • Custom CMS with building blocks for events, media, schedules, campus

  • Integration with student alumni network

  • Website won multiple awards for its design and versatility

OpenBuildings (MaterialBank company)

–

OpenBuildings was a crowd-sourced website for buildings targeted at architects, students and tourists. It was funded by Index Ventures in 2011. We pivoted to Clippings in 2012.

  • Created the professional profiles for architecture companies at OpenBuildings.

  • Introduced subscription payments for premium profiles of architecture companies as the first monetization.

Awards

SEO on-site optimization - young talents (BG Site)

Awarded by SEOM

https://web.archive.org/web/20101125134349/http://blog.bgsite.org/?p=222

Publications

Automating processes with JavaScript & Git

Published by DEV.BG JavaScript Talks

Using tools like Husky, lint-changed and run-if-changed to wrap personal and team development processes with Git and Javascript

Open-Source Contributions

Published by Bulgaria OpenFest

Closing keynote at OpenFest 2016 on the topic of contributing to open-source - what this means, how to do it and why

Upgrading to PHP 7

Published by Bulgaria PHP Conference

Lightning talk on how to upgrade to PHP 7 in a safe and reliable manner

Composer Tips & Tricks

Published by PHP User Group

Composer tips & tricks for beginners and advanced users

Development workflow

Published by Bulgaria Web Summit

Best practices in development workflow: Git, GitHub, Unit testing, Continuous integration

Skills

Backend Development

  • TypeScript
  • Node.js
  • NestJS
  • PHP
  • PostgreSQL
  • MySQL
  • Bash
  • Python
  • Apache
  • Object-oriented programming
  • Functional programming
  • SOLID principles
  • Design patterns
  • Domain-driven design
  • MVC
  • Symfony
  • Silex
  • OAuth
  • REST APIs
  • HTTP protocol
  • Database architecture

Frontend Development

  • HTML
  • CSS
  • JavaScript
  • SASS
  • ReactJS
  • Browser extensions
  • AngularJS
  • Webpack
  • jQuery
  • jQuery plugin development
  • Google Maps JavaScript SDK

DevOps

  • Git
  • GitHub Actions
  • Travis CI
  • Git Hooks
  • Development Tools

Infrastructure

  • AWS
  • Terraform
  • Ansible
  • Linux
  • Docker
  • Vagrant
  • Linode
  • Capistrano

Management

  • Hiring
  • Budgeting
  • Interviewing
  • Personal development
  • Goal setting
  • Coaching
  • Collaboration
  • Transparency

Strategy & Product

  • Data-driven
  • Technical account management
  • OKRs
  • Rolling horizon planning
  • Budgeting

Data Science & Machine Learning

  • Data collection
  • Data scraping
  • ETLs
  • Feature extraction
  • Statistics
  • Jupiter Notebooks
  • Anaconda
  • Tensorflow
  • LLMs

Languages

English

Fluent

Bulgarian

Native speaker

French, Spanish, Italian

Beginner

Interests

Open-Source

  • Elections platform
  • dotfiles
  • bash notetaker
  • community lists

Technology

  • Electric vehicles
  • Space exploration
  • Physics
  • Astronomy

Politics

  • Fair elections
  • Access to journalism
  • Election systems
  • Economics

References

Harry is one of the most curious and fast learning developers I have worked with. He is persistent, hard-working, very ambitious, full of ideas, with a strong analytical mind and an eye for detail. The variety of his interests, his intelligence and the knowledge he has acquired, especially considering his age, would impress everyone.

Simeon Dimitrov, worked as a peer in 2011