Track Record

I'm building a fractional CTO practice. I don't have a wall of polished case studies yet. What I have is 23 years of work across the full stack, in different roles, at different scales, with different kinds of teams. Here's what that looks like.

2010–2012

Real money, real pressure

From 2010 to 2012 I worked at Playtech as a backend application specialist and third-level oncall support. Playtech builds the software behind online casinos, poker rooms, sports betting, and live dealer games. The systems handled real money transactions every second. When something broke at 2am, I was the one who picked up.

That job taught me what it feels like when downtime has a price tag. It shaped how I think about risk, reliability, and the trade-offs you make when "move fast" meets "don't lose people's money."

~10 years

Ten years of trust

I've worked with MadeByOn, a UK web agency, for roughly ten years. That's not a typo. It started as task-based contract work and has grown over time. I've salvaged old codebases, built new features across frontend and backend, managed AWS infrastructure, and worked directly with their clients. Some of those clients have asked for me to stay on their projects by name.

Ten years with the same team doesn't happen by accident. It happens when you show up, do solid work, and don't create drama.

Now

Technical leadership now

SimpliHost is an early-stage PropTech SaaS company. I work with the founder, Beth, as a fractional CTO. That means helping shape the product roadmap, making build-vs-buy calls, running the development rhythm, and translating business goals into work the dev team can act on. It's the kind of engagement my practice is built around.

2019–2025

700+ technical interviews

From 2019 to 2025 I worked as a technical interviewer at Karat, a company that runs structured interviews on behalf of tech companies. I started as an interviewer and progressed to senior interviewer. Along the way I took on additional roles: reviewing interview content, onboarding new interviewers, and participating in the Brilliant Black Minds programme to help underrepresented engineers land jobs.

700+ interviews across companies, tech stacks, and seniority levels gave me something most people don't get: a cross-section of what good engineers look like and what patterns predict problems. When I advise a founder on hiring or evaluate their team's work, that's where the pattern recognition comes from.

Things I built

I don't just advise. I still build.

Trello Improvements Extension

2015

I was working as a senior PM and got frustrated with what Trello couldn't do. So I built a browser extension to fix it. It's still live with roughly 1,200 active installs across Chrome and Firefox. Small thing, but it's a pattern: see a problem, build a solution, ship it.

ProjectRecap

projectrecap.com

Analyses git history to surface delivery patterns and risks. I'm running it as a 90-day experiment to validate demand.

StepSprite

stepsprite.com

A hardware step tracker for walking pad users. Custom firmware, custom app, manufactured hardware. New territory for me, and that's the point.

Open Source & Failures

Ongoing

Small contributions to WordPress over the years — core patches, a plugin, translations. I also tried and failed to run an agency with three friends back in 2006. We couldn't make it sustainable. I learned more from that than from most of my successful projects.

Teaching & community

Teaching has been a thread through my whole career

University. Assistant in a web development course for one year (2008).
Corporate training. Taught PHP at an HR agency to upskill their candidates (2013).
School. Co-founded a small school teaching photography and web development with PHP (2012–2014).
Conference. Spoke at Bulgaria's first WebTech conference about PHP PEAR (2005).
Community. Created and led Microstock BG, a community of microstock photography contributors in Bulgaria. Around 2,000 members at its peak. I ran the forums, organised offline events, and hosted speakers. I kept the space useful and non-toxic, which in Bulgarian photography communities is harder than it sounds. Active from 2007 to 2014.

None of this was about building a personal brand. I did it because I like explaining things and helping people get better at their work. It turns out that's also most of what fractional CTO work is: translating technical reality into language founders can act on.

The full picture

Junior developer Senior developer Backend specialist Oncall support Photographer Teacher Project manager Senior PM Agency founder (failed) Remote contractor Browser extension builder Open source contributor Community leader Technical interviewer Fractional CTO

Not a straight line. But every role gave me a different view of how software gets built, how teams work, and where things go wrong. That range is what I bring to the table.

Let's talk

I'm looking for a small number of founder-led SaaS teams who need technical leadership without a full-time hire. If that's you, let's have a conversation. No pitch, just a look at where you are and whether I can help.

Get in touch

Based in Bulgaria, EU. EET timezone.