My Background
I have been building software for more than 20 years. These days I focus on platform work and tools that make other engineers more effective, including AI where it genuinely helps teams ship reliable software.
I see AI as most useful when you understand the problem well and know what good engineering looks like. I like working on systems, practices and tools that let people use AI in a clear, practical way, instead of treating it as a shortcut.
Outside of work I spend most of my time with my family, trying to teach my son useful skills and a healthy way to look at the world. I enjoy building things with my hands – from furniture to parts of house renovation – and recharging through travelling, games, long conversations with friends and reading fantasy, fiction and LitRPG stories.
Technical Skills
Technical expertise and technologies from my CV profile (same groups as the platform CV editor).
Technical Expertise
Developer Platforms & ToolingDeveloper Experience (DevEx)Product EngineeringFrontend ArchitectureEngineering ProductivityPlatform EngineeringInternal Developer PlatformsCI/CD & Release EngineeringEnd-to-End TestingReliability EngineeringObservability & TelemetryTechnical LeadershipSecurity Reviews & Threat ModelingMobile & Web ApplicationsSearch & Discovery SystemsContributed to engineering hiring, technical evaluation, and talent development efforts
Languages
TypeScriptPythonJavaRustHackPHPBashKotlinSwiftObjective-CC++
Frontend & Mobile
ReactReact NativeAndroidiOSHTMLCSS
Platform & Infrastructure
Node.jsGraphQLREST APIsThriftDockerLinuxAWSCI/CD Pipelines
Data & Search
PostgreSQLMySQLMongoDBMemcachedElasticsearchSolr
Developer Tooling
Build SystemsRelease AutomationE2E TestingTelemetry & Monitoring
Published from platform CV config via publish-rijavec.sh. Familiar technologies are shown in italics.
Experience
Meta
6 years 4 months- Senior Software Engineer - VS Code
- Senior Software Engineer - Code Search & Indexing
- Senior Software Engineer - Mobile Ads Manager
- Built and scaled the engineering systems that became the standard delivery platform for Meta's VS Code ecosystem, supporting 200+ extensions and thousands of engineers.
- Eliminated hundreds of hours of annual manual testing and release effort through automated CI/CD, release orchestration, quality validation, health monitoring, and rollback systems.
- Established Meta's extension testing strategy and created the VS Code E2E testing platform, standardizing quality validation across extension teams through reusable infrastructure and automated verification.
- Defined the platform health, release-readiness, and operational governance models used to evaluate extension quality, deployment risk, and reliability across developer tooling and AI-powered engineering experiences.
- Accelerated developer productivity by reducing extension build times by approximately 95%, introducing automated release workflows, and delivering tooling that improved deployment visibility and operational efficiency.
TrustedHousesitters
5 years 3 months- Principal Engineer
- Lead Engineer
- Helped scale TrustedHousesitters from an early-stage web business into an award-winning mobile-first consumer platform, contributing to the company's growth, international expansion, and investment readiness.
- Established the engineering foundations that enabled sustained product delivery across web and mobile, including platform architecture, CI/CD, automated testing, deployment automation, and cloud infrastructure.
- Led the evolution of the company's mobile engineering capability from the first iOS release through team scale-up, platform standardization, and award-winning customer experiences.
- Improved one of the platform's most critical customer journeys by redesigning Elasticsearch-based search infrastructure, increasing search performance by approximately 200%.
- Built scalable platform services including media processing, distributed task execution, REST APIs, containerized infrastructure, and cloud-native deployment systems that supported rapid product growth.
Dixero International SA
1 years 3 months- Lead Software Engineer, Mobile & Platform
- Delivered large-scale digital music streaming and e-commerce platforms for major European telecommunications and financial institutions, including Gruppo Telecom Italia, Banca Intesa, and Musicload.de.
- Built and operated secure content delivery platforms supporting streaming, offline playback, digital purchases, and catalog management for assets from Universal, Sony, and Warner Music.
- Developed audio transcoding and content processing pipelines that enabled scalable ingestion, distribution, and playback of large music catalogs across web and mobile experiences.
- Built high-volume push notification infrastructure delivering to millions of users daily across iOS, Android, and Microsoft platforms.
- Designed highly available platform architecture using MongoDB, Solr, HAProxy, Jetty, and Varnish to support performance, reliability, and operational scalability.
Delo d.d.
3 years 1 months- Full Stack Engineer
- Contributed to the digital transformation of Slovenia's largest media publisher, delivering major redesigns and platform improvements across high-traffic news properties serving a significant share of the national online audience.
- Implemented a unified authentication platform that enabled single sign-on across multiple publishing brands and digital properties.
- Improved application performance through database optimization, caching architecture, and infrastructure modernization, reducing page-load times by more than 50%.
- Designed and implemented scalable publishing infrastructure incorporating search, caching, high-availability services, and content delivery systems.
- Delivered digital archive and content-discovery experiences that improved access to historical media content and reader engagement.
ZootFly
1 years 3 months- Game Developer
- Integrated Slovenian battlefield Poček into VBS2 simulation engine for training scenarios
- Built in-game VoIP subsystem (Speex) for real-time speech communication in Military Vehicle Crew Simulator (Guardiaris VCS)
Fortheia.si
4 years 8 months- Freelance Software Developer
- Built CMS/CRM foundation for next-generation web applications and white-label portals
- Delivered ToolEast project management modules and open-source ERP tooling for SMEs
- Designed route-optimisation algorithm reducing travelled distance and costs by ~60% on known routes
- Shipped transactional email and marketing campaign delivery system
IPKO Telecommunication
7 months- Software Developer
- Built internal form/questionnaire generators and intranet tooling for telecom operations
Slovenian Nuclear Safety Administration
10 months- Software Engineer
- Delivered intranet reporting modules and improved module development workflow for agency staff
Sonce.net
10 months- Junior Software Engineer
- Built PHP–Flash communication layer and shipped client marketing sites from design to production
