Kostandin
From Albania (GMT+2)
12 years of commercial experience
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Kostandin – React, Node.js, AWS
After founding and running his own startup for some time, Kostandin has recently decided to step back from business ventures to focus on contracting again. Specializing in full-stack development with React and Node, Kostandin has a strong interest in contributing to projects related to fintech, edtech, or other domains! Recently, this candidate was able to grow his expertise by working with AI and architecting LLM pipelines. During our vetting process, he demonstrated solid knowledge of relational and non-relational databases and familiarity with production network setup and CI/CD practices, and apperaed to be well-positioned for future leadership roles!
Main technologies
Additional skills
Ready to start
16 Sept 2024Direct hire
Potentially possibleExperience Highlights
Co-founder, Product Engineering
An AI-powered platform that streamlines video presentations for product marketers by automating tasks like brainstorming, copywriting, and styling while generating realistic avatars, voices, and visuals based on the content.
- Co-founded a bootstrapped company that began as a microlearning app with interactive videos;
- After struggling to find product-market fit, pivoted to AI-generated videos for product presentations, achieving 20,000 users through product-led growth and 30% month-over-month user growth;
- Architected the multimedia LLM pipeline, incorporating speech and video models, developed a feature-rich video editor using React.js and Node.js and built a video processing service with FFmpeg and Pupeteer to deliver the final presentations;
- Led customer interviews to quickly iterate on product features while handling customer support, direct sales, and partnerships.
Technical Lead
A SaaS platform that empowers product owners to prototype niche ideas on a parametrized RAG framework rapidly.
- Led a team of three full-stack developers to deliver two key components: the RAG Engine (a customizable AI pipeline with abstract services driven by configurations) and a GrantGrid Platform (specialized implementation on top of the engine designed for grant writing);
- Designed the backend architecture and maintained the core library;
- Improved the LLM pipeline, resulting in a 40% performance boost and improved observability, which led to a 25% reduction in debugging time and more consistent outcomes;
- Worked closely with the CEO and GTM leader to test various product hypotheses while sustaining development velocity.
Lead Software Engineer
The candidate was leading the development of multiple projects: a UWP bot for Microsoft's store product recommendations; a fintech investment platform related to secondary markets; a fintech platform for investment providers aggregation; a video conferencing web app with interactive presentations.
- Led a team of four senior full-stack engineers in delivering multiple products using Node.js, React.js, Redux, AWS, Docker, and Terraform;
- Architected a modular and testable backend with 90% test coverage;
- Designed the front end with Redux sagas for improved separation of concerns, ensuring scalability and enhanced testing as the app grew to support more services;
- Architected the WebRTC and frontend of CloudMeet, an internal video conferencing tool designed to support up to 500 participants, featuring interactive elements like real-time presentation interactions and chat;
- Collaborated with managers and senior engineers on the Core team to standardize processes, providing guidance, documentation, and boilerplates to enhance team efficiency in the JavaScript department;
- Interviewed and hired over 10 senior engineers during the company’s rapid growth;
- Assessed potential technical debt in incoming projects, reducing future maintenance costs.
Tech Lead
A JavaScript-focused engineering agency that collaborates with German clients to develop mid-to-large scale SaaS platforms. Projects the candidate contributed to included an HR SaaS tailored for the German market and a digital real estate management SaaS serving the local market as well.
- Led a team of five full-stack engineers in delivering both projects, providing technical guidance, conducting code reviews, and overseeing software architecture;
- Refactored the HR SaaS from a legacy codebase to a Node.js API with GraphQL to accelerate development and enable graph querying;
- Implemented an advanced role-based access control service in Redis, allowing for highly granular client configurations;
- Collaborated with the founders on establishing company standards, including process documentation, codebase quality definitions, project reviews, CI/CD pipelines, and a standardized stack centered on Node.js, React, Postgres, and AWS.
Senior Full-Stack Engineer
An AdTech Marketplace providing OEMs like ZTE and USCellular with customizable web monetization features through numerous integrations.
- Improved the platform performance by 30% to support millions of clients' users by caching with Redis, improved MongoDB aggregations, and offloaded to queues.
- Initiated the decoupling of monolithic code to the React front end to improve the feature development without too much technical debt.
Lead Software Developer
A software agency that builds desktop, web and mobile applications for local and European clients
- Built the team from scratch, recruiting peers from university and mentoring their way to full-stack engineering with Java Spring, AngularJS, Postgres, and Hibernate;
- Supervised the development cycle of 5 medium B2B products for local and regional markets, including workout platform, car rental SaaS, and e-commerce;
- Worked closely with the founder and lead designer to build product specifications from direct discussions with the clients.