Dejan Strbac

Profile

I am an experienced developer with business/managerial skills.

I have a track record of innovating, playing within the limits as well with them, initiating and leading the entire life cycle of projects. I prototype, conceptualise, visualise and deliver my ideas rapidly, whether they are a part of a project or the project itself.

Previously I've been described as a fast thinker, goal oriented, team player & innovator, adventurer & risk taker, ambitious and playful person that delivers.

Objective

I am interested in an opportunity to pursue and contribute with my research, entrepreneurial and creative ambitions under a roof that cherishes innovation. If you can provide me with a challenging environment where analytical thinking and creativity is essential, conventional assumptions are condemned, radical innovation is assumed, new ideas and playing with them are warmly accepted, we should talk.

Work Experience

DeinDeal, Zurich, Switzerland (2011)
Senior Developer / Technical Product Manager [»]
DeinDeal is the largest group buying platform in Switzerland (by 70% market share) and one of the fastest growing Swiss startups with ~50 employees (by revenue). With my tech and entrepreneurial background, I share the roles of the Lead Engineer/Senior Developer (mostly Python & Django) and the Technical Product Manager in the company. I have been brought to the team to reengineer the core systems, take over the CTO position, expand and steer the engineering team (albeit still small) with a strong business focus on the lean startup methodology.

SyncFu Limited, London, UK (2010)
managing partner, cofounder, CTO & developer [»]
I conceptualised and developed a complex demand aggregation / group buying alternative
Ruby on Rails, Heroku, Javascript, embeddable widgets without frameworks, dynamic data injection into pages via JSONP, Rails Metal API, MongoDB (via MongoHQ), Memcached, AWS

3Scale, Barcelona, Spain (2009)
developer [»]
I built an API analytics web application, similar to Google Analytics.
Ruby on Rails, statistics aggregation & processing, PDF reporting, Google Charts & Vis. API.

Buck Doo, Belgrade, Serbia (2008)
marketing/project manager [»]
I was part of online/press marketing strategy and part of the technical team that lead development of the supporting tools.

Velkowski Doo, Belgrade, Serbia (2007)
managing partner, cofounder, CTO & developer [»]
I led a team of three in developing and deploying a dynamic digital signage system.
Other duties included company management and stock portfolio analysis. Java, Javascript, bash scripting, kiosk software, custom-compiled embedded Linux, customer-built hardware platform, GPRS communication, custom GPS tracking. Side project involved heavy use of Ruby and in some cases Rails.

E.ON Ruhrgas, Essen, Germany (2006)
internship, IT manager [»]
I helped debug SAP NetWeaver applications (Java) & wrote the code / UI standards
Faced with low quality standards in outsourcing, after conducting analysis on potential savings, I initiated and developed Code & User Interface Guidelines. The internship was funded by the Serbian & German Government, on a Zoran Dinđić Fund Sholarship.

EuroICC Doo, Belgrade, Serbia (2004)
team leader & Java developer [»]
In a team of three, we re-engineered a legacy ladder programming application for PLCs.
Our project was completed in three months time and won Best Innovation award on the Belgrade Technology Fair 2005.

Syple / Saatchi & Saatchi (2003)
Contract, SQL optimisation & Adobe Flash developer [»]
In a team of four, we were given a task of optimising an interactive chat application which was occurring heavy latency times. Due to IP reasons, we were not given UI code, which made the problem more interesting. More information available on the Syple's website.

Education

MSc. in Industrial Ingeenering, Management & Economics
Politecnico di Milano, Italy (degree pending) [abroad]
Note: four exams left, paused in 2010 due to a startup involvement

BSc. in Computer Science & Information Technology
Faculty of Information Technology, Belgrade, Serbia (2006)
Faculty of Computer Science, Belgrade, Serbia
Faculty of Technical Sciences, Novi Sad, Serbia
Note: compound degree

High School Diploma + Computer Technology Vocational Degree
Richmond Technical Center, Richmond, Virginia, USA (2002) [abroad]
Atlee High School, Mechanicsville, Virginia, USA (2002) [abroad]
Gimnazija, Leskovac, Serbia
Note: completed the courses a year earlier

Initiatives

Projects & Startups

SyncFu [sold] [»]
Free demand aggregation service for online merchants based on micro-deposits
Worldwide publicity and praise - online and offline. Noted as a "hot" process innovation in several trend-reporting companies. I developed the application from scratch and led its life cycle.

Aleveo.org [now offline] [»]
Crowdsourcing of student's ideas and recruiting based on the novelty proposition
A not-for-profit project:
* TechCrunch Europe coverage 2009
* TechCrunch Europas Best Social Innovation finalist 2009
* EU Year of Creativity and Innovation 2009 recognized project

Investo.rs [now offline] [»]
The "hacker's stock portfolios tracker" & social network for brokers
Developed as a hooby, the application crawled and scraped capital structure data from government websites and compiled it in daily/weekly trackable changes. Who is selling, who is buying, insider trading indications. Forced to shutdown in 2008, even though it grew as the largest online stock exchange community in Serbia.

Digital Signage Media System [now offline] [»]
An open sourced digital signage, on a custom hardware platform and compiled Linux distribution. Suitable for static locations as displays or interactive kiosks, as well in-vehicle information and promotions, It featured a failsafe GPRS communication, self-adapting GPS triangulation and smart media caching.

CozmoDos FreeDOS distribution [now offline, download IMG here] [»]
Open sourced Serbian distribution of the FreeDOS project
I added support for Serbian language, documentation, package management and simplified installation. MS-DOS was still heavily used, without support, so I decided to build an alternative. Featured in PC World Mikro, June 2003.

Research

I actively research on the following topics:
- e-commerce & demand aggregation
- gaming mechanics
- innovation management
- HR vs. creativity & innovation
- P2P & Overlay Networks
- Data Preservation - where will this webpage and blog be in 100 years?

Public Documents:
- HR: Recruiting based on creativity and pro-active value propositions, 2009
- Computer Science: Relational File System (BSc. Thesis), 2006

Press Presence

- Glamour Italia, May 2010, project Aleveo
- Campus Magazine, March 2010, cover page, founders of project Aleveo

Skills

Business/Managerial

Being involved in several startups, as an employee and co-founder, I am familiar with day-to-day business operations and project planning.

In teams, I am known to take the lead and responsibility, moderate, raise morale and stubbornly focus on reaching pre-set goals.

Technical

I code in Vim and TextMate: Ruby (Rails) and Javascript (jQuery, Prototype). I have done significant work in PHP, Java, Pascal, Intel x86 16/32bit assembly & bat/bash scripting. When I am not building the next big thing, I play with OCaml, Lua & Lisp.
I contribute to open source when I reach better solutions.

While I develop, I test only* what haunts me at night, and iterate prototypes fast. After a milestone, I turn to total testing and nothing but testing with real use cases.
*I am an opponent of TDD in early stage projects, and am working on own model

Graphical

I use what is available to visualise ideas, but notably pen & paper, Photoshop, Illustrator, Keynote... Sometimes I create interesting videos and documents.

Spoken Languages

I am fluent in: English, Serbian, Croatian, Macedonian, Montenegrin, Bosnian.
I get around with: Italian, Bulgarian.
I should hit the books again on: German.

Regardless of the language, I express my thoughts clearly and eloquently.

Involvements & Memberships

- Zoran Đinđić Fund alumni association, Belgrade, Serbia
- Sandbox Network

Notable Personal Achievements

- Unesco honourable mention, Goi Peace Foundation
- Scholarship of Dr. Zoran Đinđić Fund and German Government, Serbia, 2006
- Vice President of VICA chapter in Richmond Technical Center, Virginia, USA, 2001/2002
- Golden Medal, Computer Technology, VICA VA State Championship, VA Beach, USA, 2002
- Listed in Who’s Who Among American High School Students, 2001

References

Available on request.