Resume
Senior backend engineer with thirteen years of Scala in production, working mainly on distributed backend systems in fintech, commerce and identity. Long practice with functional Scala — Cats Effect, Akka, typed domain modeling — and with the operational side of systems that have to stay up.
Currently contracting for Flaminem through my own company, and deliberately moving toward Rust for work closer to the machine.
For the longer version, see Career.
Technical Profile
Primary: Scala — functional (Cats Effect), actor-based (Akka/Pekko), Play Framework
Also: Rust, Java, C/C++ (embedded), Ruby, JavaScript
Data: PostgreSQL, MySQL, Neo4j, MongoDB
Practice: Domain-driven design, type-driven design, service-oriented backends, REST APIs
Hardware: PIC and STM32 firmware, circuit design, instrumentation
Experience
Flaminem — Scala Engineer
Dec 2023 – present
- Backend services in functional Scala across the company’s estate, on an Akka / Cats Effect / Neo4j stack.
- Second engagement with Flaminem, following earlier work on their KYC product.
Blyott — Director of Engineering
Nov 2024 – Oct 2025
- Ran engineering for a real-time IoT platform aggregating high-volume asset and location data in healthcare settings.
- Led the small team responsible for keeping the .NET system running, covering maintenance, debugging and feature delivery.
Moneyfarm — Scala Engineer
Aug 2022 – Dec 2023
- Built and maintained services across a broad internal microservice estate behind wealth-management and life-insurance products.
- Scala with Akka, Play Framework, Cats and MySQL, in a regulated financial domain.
Flaminem — Scala Engineer
Sep 2021 – May 2022
- Feature development and maintenance on the company’s flagship KYC product, using a functional Scala / Akka / Cats Effect / Neo4j stack.
- Identity and ownership structures modeled as a graph rather than forced into relational tables.
McKinsey & Company — Software Developer / Architect
Apr 2018 – Jun 2020
- Architected and built an internal travel-data aggregation system, exposing processed results over REST to the web and mobile clients built alongside it.
- Owned the design, not just the implementation.
Major League Gaming — Software Developer / Architect
Jul 2014 – Aug 2017
- Led design and development of a proprietary, mission-critical commerce system selling limited merchandise through custom checkout flows.
- Scala and Play, built specifically for throughput and resilience — the traffic pattern was large synchronized spikes, where failure is immediately public.
Quantum bit d.o.o. — Founder
Jun 2014 – present
- Croatian software company — quantum-bit.net — contract engineering, mostly for the US market, alongside internal R&D in electronics and collaboration with academic institutions.
- The vehicle for my independent and contract work, including the current Flaminem engagement.
Reactive Studios / Earplay — Cofounder, CTO
2013 – present (operations wound down Q4 2025)
- Cofounder, co-owner and CTO. Built an iOS/Android interactive-audio title, then a B2B authoring and publishing platform for voice assistants — Alexa and Google Home — on a Scala/Play backend.
- The platform ran commercially for a decade; the last customers were offboarded in Q4 2025. The company still exists but is no longer trading.
Earlier Career
Star Code LLC — Director, CTO · 2013 – 2014
Distributed video distribution platform aggregating content from multiple
sources across an array of sites, with multiple payment gateways. Scala/Play
and RabbitMQ.
BRIGHTdriver, Inc. — Director of Engineering · 2012 – 2013
Structured and prototyped an in-car entertainment platform across
Rails/iOS/Android, taking it from idea to working product.
Where, LLC / PayPal — Manager, Software Development · 2010 – 2012
Core services team on the Offers subsystem; then product lead for the backend of
eBay’s Lifestyle Deals on the PayPal Media Network side, including partner data
exchange negotiation and third-party integration.
Where, Inc. — Senior Software Developer · 2009 – 2010
Lead developer on the flagship Where mobile application; designed BrewPort, an
internal porting framework and code generator addressing gaps in Qualcomm’s BREW
SDK; Rails work on the small-merchant portal with payment and CRM integrations.
University of Split (FESB) — Teacher and Developer · 2008 – 2012
Taught Introduction to Computers and Programming and Programming for Unix;
separately maintained components of the university information system.
Kogram d.o.o. — Software Developer / Designer · 2001 – 2008
Document management system for the Ministry of Environmental Protection and
Physical Planning; ISO 2709 library management software for school and
special-purpose libraries.
Education
MSc, Computer Science — University of Split, FESB
Languages: Croatian (native), English (Cambridge CAE), Italian (basic)