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.
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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-CCC++
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.
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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
