Leni Kirilov

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Leni Kirilov

Software architect & engineering lead · Sofia, Bulgaria

17+ years building distributed systems at scale, and the engineering cultures that sustain them. I care about four things in this order: getting the architecture right before the scale arrives, keeping teams technically sharp without micromanaging, making AI tooling produce measurable outcomes rather than just impressions, and treating every commit as a long-term commitment.

What I'm doing now

  • Lead Software Architect on a platform for real-time quality analysis of video streams (2024–present). First engineer; designed and led a platform processing tens of thousands of concurrent HLS streams, with automated quality monitoring and event-driven data pipelines.
  • Volunteer Software Architect at DariVreme.com — helping a Bulgarian time-donation platform reach more people, faster.
  • Writing the "20 months on a platform for real-time quality analysis of video streams" series — see the blog.

Before that

  • Adverity (2021–2025) — Software Architect / Staff Engineer. Led the multi-tenant migration of a core JVM component in a heterogeneous SOA platform.
  • Taulia (2014–2021) — Engineering Manager / Tech Lead. Seven years building distributed systems and engineering teams.
  • VMware (2011–2014) — vCenter Orchestrator / vCloud Automation Center / PowerCLI. Automation, Java, and team leadership.
  • SAP (2009–2011) — Java software engineer, NetWeaver Web Services team.

Stack

Java 21 · Spring Boot · Kafka · AWS (App Runner, Lambda, CloudFront, S3, MediaLive) · Terraform · PostgreSQL · Claude Code daily · GitHub Copilot · OpenAI integration · ADRs as a forcing function.

Open to

Senior architecture or head-of-engineering contracts — remote, EU companies. Distributed real-time systems, platform work, engineering-culture rebuilds. Open to advisory work for AI-adoption programmes in established teams.

Find me

Languages

English (C1) · Bulgarian (native) · German (limited working)