Valentin Popescu

12 February 1984
+44 7413 668 667

Previous Contracts
May 2010 Present

VerticalJelly / Popescu Valentin Informatica PFA

Romania
CEO, CTO & Lead Dev

My own company that I use to make various software for some clients and I also use to do contracting with
across EU. Were building full custom software solutions and games for our clients in Europe using a range of
languages like: Javascript (both frontend and backend MEAN stack and frameworks like ReactJS, Angular,
Meteor, ExtJS, SenchaTouch, ionic, famo.us etc. being among the frameworks were specialized into but were
also doing more bleeding edge things like WebGL based games with websockets supported communication on
HTML5), C++ with highest possible standards C++11 and 14 using various frameworks like Qt, MFC, WPF for
UI and anything it takes for the backend, were also doing some OpenGL work although were quite young on
this, C#, Java, PHP (not so many clients lately although it has gained some momentum with PHP7 being out).
Were also doing mobile development for all platforms building the core of the applications in C++ and the UI in
their respective languages (Android in Java, iOS in Objective-C and sometimes SWIFT, Windows Phone in C#)
We have a team that its focus is backend development and data solutions with big data systems based on
MongoDB and transactional data systems based on either PostgreSQL or MySQL that we can also offer as a
service for servers deployed in our partners datacentres or on our clients datacentre / AWS / any other cloud
system. In this regard we are able to offer full support for the system management and network security
(devops) 24/7 and 365 days a year.
Created a node.js framework for people that come from PHP background to be able to pick node.js up quickly
and get started fast thats public on github and npm for free and a lot of proprietary projects some for our
clients some that were going to market ourselves.
Javascript Frameworks we specialize in: Meteor, React, ExtJS, SenchaTouch, Famo.us, Three.js, d3.js, JQuery
and JQueryUI, Express, Yarf(own lightweight framework). Even if your framework isnt listed here we may
actually have experience with it as this is not an exhaustive list.
PHP Frameworks: Zend, Laravel, Yii, Symfony,YarfPHP(our own lightweight framework),
C/C++ Frameworks: Qt, Boost, STL, Wt, Marmalade and all the major libraries that run on Windows and Linux.

Jun 2016 Present

TrafficJunky ( Mindgeek)
Remote from Romania
Lead Systems Architect

Leading a large team of team leaders and project managers for most of the projects regarding the advertising
network and all its infrastructure. Develop and implement the latest technology for one of the largest advert
network after Google. Implemented full stack continuous integration (development, testing, deployment) for all
the systems using newer technology to replace the old ones. Implemented microservices architecture to be able
to update components without taking down the whole system, Traffic management systems based on psychology
profiles for the individuals targeted by the adds with very complex data gathering algorithms for the best impact
the adds can make. Systems to avoid add blockers and tracking blockers mechanisms. Big Data analysis for user
profiles and logs of their activity and tracking based on distributed data analysis (map / reduce and other similar
technology). Due to the nature of the projects the UI was exclusively done in React JS using all the SEO
mechanisms available.

Jul 2015 Apr 2016

Amadeus Data Processing GmbH

Munich Germany
Senior software Architect Ultra high availability and Embedded Systems

The role was as high performance C++ for delivering a special project to a major client of the company. The
project required Ultra high availability as well as extremely low latency conditions (140ms roundtrip across the
globe). The project is to be used in order to migrate existing software from mainframes to the said cloud
computing cluster for higher reliability and availability as well as decommission an already too old hardware /
software stack. The project was successfully delivered and started replacing its predecessors. Given it was a
highly parallel cloud computing piece of code that was supposed to match an existing mainframe; the
performance requirements were very high and extremely important for the business given the the place of
usage for the said software and the importance of the decisions and actions made by it. The other project in
which I was involved was a very high security embedded system for recording of events and sending the records
whenever connections become available along with a few other tweaks and changes to the systems in which the
said device was connected. NDAs dont allow me to talk too much about this second project. After Sept 2015 I
had a few 3-4 week extensions leading up to the 30 th of April 2016. The role was for both leading the teams that
implemented some of the features as well as develop some of the features for which the teams lacked the skills.
Skills used: C++, TCP, custom protocols, server topology and high performance prediction mechanisms, caching
databases, big data crunching, map reduce, high performance software tuning, Embedded systems, RTOS.

Magic Works
Central London (Farringdon) & Home in Romania
Senior Backend Solutions Architect
The role was a server side node.js role delivering the whole architecture and development of the server side
including the database which initially was MongoDB and later on for political reasons switched to CouchBase. The
server side was developed using Express and built over micro services architecture for it to best suit the company
needs and application fast pace updates as well as keeping a very high availability even during upgrades of the
application. The deployment was done automatically on AWS with continuous integration, unit tests (with Mocha)
and behavior tests as well as regression for the best quality deployment process to be assured. The UI of the
application was made using Angular in which even if I was not a full hands-on UI developer I ended up touching the
code quite a lot (given that the actual graphical design was assured by a professional designer). The servers were
deployed to support a lot of devices for a streaming service maintaining really high quality profile.
Awesome environment that I really loved especially for the forward thinking and open mind-ness of the team more
so hinted by the fact that most of the team was working remotely almost exclusively (myself from Romania, another
guy from Amsterdam etc.) proving that it is possible for companies to function properly and even better without any
need for being in the actual office, in fact it was one of the best if not the best team experience I had in a long time.
Skills used: Node.JS, MongoDB, AWS, Linux, DB Architecture, Server topology architecture.
Feb 2015 Jun 2015

July 2014 Feb 2015

Square Enix
Central London (Blackfriars)
Senior Technical Solution Architect & Developer

The role was initially to deliver a system for delivery of the games developed by the company targeting one
particular game that has to be released soon as a pilot and then build up from there. The project then built up into
something much larger than it was initially planned. I did the architecture of the project in every aspect of it
(servers, database, and client) and planned out future expansions and their road map for the permanent staff to take
over. The project had an addition for an asymmetric matchmaking component, chatting, download via P2P and
several other features that I can't speak about right now. I also did the development of the server side and the
deployment process. The server side is written using JavaScript on a framework written by myself (fits the purpose
better than Express for the project at hand... we did consider Express as a candidate though), which I developed as a
free software. The deployment process is written using AWS Cloud Formation and I also designed a deployment
process using the Beanstalk. It uses a 3x3 MongoDB cluster as a database optimized for in memory caching (so that
there's no need for Redis or something similar) as well as data processing (M/R). The whole system auto scales (DB
only scales up and never down) The client functionality is written in C# (mainly because the games are targeted at
Windows Users, but I also wrote a C++ library so that if the company wants to target other platforms (tested on Mac
and Linux as well as the major phone OSes) it can be easily done. The P2P is designed to do hole punching and can
do traffic over both UDP and TCP. The P2P delivery of the paid content is locked using multiple security mechanisms
so that there's no way for the user to break the DRM without spending tremendous amounts of time and computing
power and yet again it would need to be redone for each and every user making it futile to try. UI of the client is done
in HTML5 + JavaScript + CSS3 and some WebGL elements on top of a CefSharp (Embedded Chrome for C#)
application so that the UI can be easily updated without issue of a new client update (although client updates are
seamless and the client can update itself while it's running) There's a Relational DB component using a MYSQL
cluster which was also designed and deployed by me.
Used C++, C#, JavaScript, Node.JS, AWS, Linux, Windows SDK, Real Time processing, Linux Kernel optimizations,
Network Architecture, Database Architecture, MongoDB, MySQL ORM, DRM, High Level Encryption, Game
Development, Unreal Engine

November 2013 April 2014

22Cans
Guildford
Senior Network Solutions Architect & Developer

The role was for everything related to networking for a game that the company is developing. The work that I have
been involved into is server and client side C++ coding, MongoDB Cluster Architecture and MongoDB Data
Warehouse Architecture as well as Database Design and best practices. The client side coding is done using C++ on
top of a multi-platform framework called Marmalade made especially for game development and other similar
applications (mainly aimed at games) for code related to the networking side of the game (authentication with
Mobage and Facebook, game assets distribution, channel encryption, game data tunneling, in-game chat system,
real time gameplay and other similar things) meanwhile the server side code is providing those server side features
for the game as well as the database functionality for continuous simultaneous very high load.
The server side was written on top of Debian as an operating system. I have done also the system administration for
the servers and tried as hard as I could to teach the permanent staff all the details for the servers to be troubleshot
and kept in great conditions.
The game is aimed at Mobile Tablets and phones as well as desktop / laptop and successfully works on Apple iPad
3+, Apple iPhone 4s+, a high variety of slightly higher end Android devices, on Windows 32 and 64 bit and on
MacOSX as well as on Linux where there's a proper OpenGL driver installed. The company is aiming at making all
the necessary work to make the game work on Windows Phone 8 as well.

January 2012 September 2013

BSKYB
London
Senior Technical Solution Architect & Developer

The initial role was of DBA and implementation of MongoDB cluster. The said cluster was a cluster of 9 shards each
replicated in a replicaset across 3 Amazon AWS EC2 Europe Zones, 2 AWS EC2 US EAST zones, and 2 internal
Datacenters to SKY giving it the highest reliability and computing power. The cluster is automatically scaling up in
case the system has used up the space or the CPU load is too high for a very long period of time.
I have evangelized for distributed source control and managed to get a lot of teams go GIT and advocated for the
usage of C++ single base of mobile applications development so that only one code base is maintained and only the
interface is done in the language for the specific platform (iOS on Objective-C and integrates seamlessly, Android
NDK seamlessly integrated as well and native Blackberry) which was well received in Sky.
Two of the applications developed for mobile have a little over 10M downloads (SKY+ and Telly.me) and the web
mobile application SkyShare has a lot of usage in Facebook.
I have also developed fully (both UI and backend) the SkyShare Facebook application for both desktop and mobile
using PHP as backend and Javascript as frontend with Angular and Jquery and a few Javascript native (on top of
some code that was existing from the design agency). Later on the backend was moved in Javascript on YARF (a
framework I developed for easy migration of PHP projects)
I have also developed various server side applications needed for the Sky+ and Sky With Friends (Telly.me) in C++
as well as Node.JS as well as a few small modules written in C++ for mongoDB as well as client side code for the
said applications.
Skills used: NoSQL/ BigData Data Warehouse Architect, Objective C, C/C++, MongoDB, NodeJS, Comet, Linux
Administration, Oracle, PostgreSQL, mySQL, Javascript, GIT, Bash, PHP, Angular, Sencha Touch, Amazon AWS,
Amazon EC2, Amazon VPC, Beanstalk, Elastic MapReduce, Android NDK, Android SDK

Emesa
Amsterdam
Senior Software Architect
Development of new features, improving existing features and fixing bugs for the websites that the company is
running. Implementation of server push mechanism (tries triple channel websockets if possible, falls back to long
polling ajax and if nothing better is available)
Skills used: Software Architecture, Javascript, NodeJS, C++, PHP, mySQL, ZendFramework, GIT, Perl / Bash
September 2011 January 2012

Toltech
Amsterdam
Senior Software Developer
Development of new features, improving existing features and fixing bugs for the website that the company is
runing.
Skills used: PHP, mySQL, CakePHP, Javascript, ECMA, jQuery, jQueryUI, (X)HTML4, CSS3. SVN & GIT, Linux
administration, Perl / Bash
March 2011 September 2011

July 2010 March 2011

Conglomerate Marketing
Remotely from home in Romania
Senior Technical Architect & Developer

The company resides in USA and working remotely on their hour schedule. Working for the web site development in
various needed tasks for both creating new features and developing or improving the current ones and debugging
the features that were already developed. Adult Industry job. I had to quit due to the hour schedule started messing
up my life and the relationship with my pregnant wife. Couldn't afford this to happen. Here I have developed both
Web and Mobile applications mainly iOS and Android using C++ for the core and Objective-c and Java for the actual
UI of the applications as well as HTML based mobile applications
Skills used: C++, iOS, Android PHP, mySQL, Javascript, NodeJS jQuery, jQueryUI, (X)HTML4, CSS, XSLT, Audio &
Video Streaming, AJAX, COMET, Websockets, High level Linux administration, JSON, PostgreSQL, Caching systems
(memcache and APC), NOSQL databases: MONGO, Perl /Bash, Java
April 2010 October 2010

1&1 INTERNET AG
Bucharest Romania and Karlsruhe Germany
Senior Software Architect & Developer

Had to develop an old PHP Framework and migrate from PHP 4 to PHP 5 also build new features into this
framework in order for it to do what the company needed it to do. Worked with Sybase database systems and OOP
heavy programming. Also developed a few PHP Modules written in C / C++ and some modules for Apache and
Lighttpd. Skills used: C and C++, Sybase SQL, PHP. Bash

February 2009 April 2010

Drsoft Realty
Bucharest Romania

Senior Technical Architect and developer

Had to design and develop from scratch a whole Client Support Online Chat system with AJAX. Was at first leading
a team of programmers and when the crisis hit the marketplace, one by one the programmers were fired being in
the end put in the situation of working all alone from home and at some point without even receiving my salary.
Even with these conditions I still finished the project and delivered it. Partially written in C++ the application was
built with performance in mind. First time using progressive server push mechanisms and websockets. The mobile
version was written in native code for both android and iOS mainly C++. This is where I started also developing with
NodeJS while it was in its infancy (because websockets and comet wasnt possible to support in PHP and was quite
hard to develop for C++)
Skills used: C/C++, Android, Objective-C, ExtJS, JavaScript, JSON, AJAX, Comet, PHP, Perl, Java, NodeJS

July 2008 February 2009

ITC
Bucharest Romania
Senior Software Developer

Develop a user interface using ExtJS framework with heavy AJAX for the NORTEL routers and embedded software
for these routers. Had to change a few routines of the already built routers.
Skills used: C/C++, ExtJS, JavaScript, JSON, AJAX, Perl
July 2007 July 2008

Streamwide
Bucharest Romania
Senior Software Developer

Development of a VOIP system using a certain modified php compilation "SW Engine" that had certain api
functions built. Mainly the heavy load was done by the php modules but the php scripts themselves were used to
be able to easily script certain routines for various needs (voicemails, overlistening conversations, connecting to
conversations that are ongoing and so on and so forth)
Skills used: C/C++, PHP, VoIP and SIP, Bash
February 2006 July 2007

Gameloft / Ubisoft
Bucharest Romania
Software Developer

Developing games for phones, consoles and PC. I worked for various titles of the company which had two labels for
their two marketplaces: phones and mobile consoles - Gameloft and Ubisoft for all the others.
Skills used: C/C++

July 2002 January 2006

Amateurmatch
Bucharest Romania

Software Developer
With this company I started my work as developer. Had to work about everything from installing servers with linux,
configuring the server for web with Apache, PHP, MySQL, Postfix, Bind Named(DNS) up to creating the web pages
with PHP / C++ (some parts were CGI based) and HTML / CSS / Javascript (by that time ajax wasn't really much )
and up to SEO. All this was done for a porn company and all their sites and chain of "click farm" sites.
Skills used: C++, Linux, PHP, Apache, MySQL, Postfix, web crawlers, SEO, JavaScript, Internet Banking, Video
Streaming, RTOS, RT programming, Perl, Bash

Languages I can speak

English Fluent in both writing and speaking

Romanian Native

Spanish Beginner-Medium level in both writing and speaking

French Beginner both writing and speaking

Dutch Just started so only basics

Education and Training

2002 2005

Universitatea din Craiova

Craiova - Romania

HBO level University studies in programming.

1998 - 2002
High School in informatics and programming.
Final exam (Bacalaureat) 9.41
Aptitudes exam 10

Colegiul National Mircea Cel Batran

Ramnicu Valcea - Romania