About Experience Skills Writing Contact
Boyan Balev
BB
Senior Full Stack Engineer

Boyan Balev

Building systems from 1st principles

I work on distributed systems and database architecture at Financial Times, where I build the infrastructure behind the MandateWire platform. 6+ years across startups and enterprise.

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How I work

I like understanding how things actually work under the hood. That usually means going deeper than most people want to before writing any code.

Systems Thinker

I break down complex problems into fundamental constraints and build solutions that work with those forces, not against them.

Technical Leader

I've helped teams through architectural decisions and mentored engineers on everything from database design to deployment pipelines.

Deep Diver

From database internals to distributed architectures, I pursue depth over breadth. That's how you build systems that actually perform.

Where I've built things

Senior Full Stack Engineer
Financial Times
2023 → Present

Building the MandateWire platform: a distributed system processing data for institutional investors daily. Led the migration to closure table patterns "Annotation Tables" that took query times from seconds to milliseconds. Driving database architecture decisions and mentoring the team on infrastructure best practices.

React Node.js TypeScript AWS PostgreSQL EKS
Full Stack Developer
EconicOne Smart Bikes
2022 → 2023

Built IoT solutions for smart bike sharing: real-time tracking, mobile apps, and sensor data pipelines for urban mobility at scale.

React Native Express Redis Kafka GCP IoT
Software Developer
Allianz Insurance (Contracted by outcourcing company)
2020 → 2022

Built insurance management systems and automated claim processing workflows. Modernized legacy codebases and optimized database performance for critical operations.

Go Typescript DynamoDB Serverless

Skills & Technologies

Frontend

React Svelte TypeScript TanStack Query

Backend

Node.js Bun / Hono Golang Quarkus

Cloud & DevOps

AWS Docker Kubernetes Terraform

Databases

PostgreSQL Redis MongoDB Kafka

Technical articles on Medium

I write about system design, infrastructure economics, streaming architectures, and what I actually learn building production software.

30+
Published articles

Topics range from Kubernetes optimization and data platform economics to Uber's CacheFront architecture and distributed systems patterns. Each piece comes from real production experience.

Read on Medium →

Let's build something

Have a project in mind, or just want to talk distributed systems and database internals? I'm always up for it.

Get in touch