My Biography and Experience

I'm currently working as the CTO at AgroCity.eu, where I'm managing a team of 10 developers, designers and DevOps.

I'm responsible for defining the technical direction of the company and making sure the best solutions are found and implemented for the defined requirements.

I would say that this is probably the best job I've had in my entire life, as I'm able to invest my time and experience in our own product and see it grow every day.

In early 2020, as the pandemic broke out, I decided to start a new project with 2 of my best friends, and we founded AgroCity.eu.

I designed the architecture of the platform, and I started developing the platform from scratch, using Laravel, Vue.js and Tailwind CSS.

Soon after, I hired my first team and we launched two internships for young developers and designers. Over the course of 3 months we trained 30 interns to become Full Stack Web Developers and Web Designers. In the end we hired 2 developers and one designer from the internship.

All in all, we managed to build a complex farm management system from scratch, launch an MVP and have our first customers in less than a year.

In 2018 I started working as a freelance web developer, for projects, such as eCharge.io, two own projects and a proof of concept for AgroCity, which later turned into AgroCity.eu

eCharge.io was a company that provided electric vehicle charging stations with an own cryptocurrency payment system, for which I developed the landing page and the admin panel. I also provided technical support for the landing page and IT Consultancy for about a year.

At the same time, I developed two own projects, one of which was a social media platform and one was a complex bookmark manager. I abandoned the social media platform after it had more than 4000 users, due to lack of funding and what I now know to be lack of experience as an entrepreneur. The bookmark manager was also a proof of concept, which proved to be incredibly useful for me and for my family.

In 2018, a friend asked me to help him out with a few small applications to better manage his farm. I developed an application to manage and print out shipping documents and designed a proof of concept for a farm management system. I implemented part of the application and we stopped after about 6 months, again due to lack of funding. Later on, this experience proved to be very useful when we got the necessary funding to build an MVP for the solution, as we already had some experience regarding the complexity of the agricultural industry and the technical challenges of such an application.

During the few years working as a freelancer, I also implemented several small projects, like landing pages, small web applications and some small websites.

For a year, I worked as an SAP Operational Architect at OMV-Petrom, in Romania, overseeing the implementation of all SAP Projects and projects in other technologies, interfacing with SAP.

I left that job, because it involved a lot of internal politics and I decided I wanted to use my skills for problem solving and building new solutions, not for politics.

After this job, I took a one-year break from work, during which I started learning web development in Laravel and VueJS and I started working on my own projects.

While working as an expat in Vienna, I received an offer for the position of Department Manager for SAP Technology at OMV-Petrom, in Romania.

For about 3 years, I managed a team of approx. 30 people, including developers, consultants and project managers. I was responsible for two teams, one for SAP ABAP Development and one for Cross-Technologies, which included SAP Workflow, SAP Archiving, SAP Portal and SAP Transport Management.

We implemented or oversaw all development projects, technical changes and 3rd level support for the entire group, in 19 countries.

Late 2009, after just one year of working as an ABAP Developer in Romania, I was offered to continue this job as an expat in Vienna, Austria.

For about 3 years I developed complex SAP ABAP Applications and I acted as an interface between the SAP functional consultant departments in Vienna and the SAP ABAP developers in Romania.

I acquired a lot of technical skills during this time, as I was working together with one of the best ABAP developers in the world, who was also my mentor. This experience would shape my future career, as I learned a lot about digitisation and optimisation of business processes and workflows and how to build applications that customers can actually use. Developing applications for white collar and blue collar workers, I learned why UI and UX matter more than the set of available functionalities.

In 2008, I started my first full-time job, working as a junior SAP ABAP Developer at OMV-Petrom, in Romania.

I worked as part of a team of around 12 developers, developing and maintaining SAP ABAP Applications.

I specialised in Object Oriented ABAP, which at that time was not very common among SAP ABAP Developers, but being young and with a fresh mind, I was able to learn it very quickly. This coincided with my main responsibility at that time, which was to provide support for an internally developed SAP ABAP Framework, and I was introduced to the master-mind behind the framework, who became my mentor, whether he knew it or not.

During 2003 and 2008 I studied Computer Science at the Technical University and International Economics at the Babes Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca, in Romania.

I worked as a digitisation operator for Banca Transilvania during a summer break and later as a part-time developer for a company in Cluj-Napoca.

I was the curious and creative kid, who didn't fit very well in the cool kids club.

I have practiced martial arts for 8 years and I have started programming in Turbo Pascal, when I was 10 years old. I was fascinated by the idea of telling computers what to do, rather than using existing games and applications, which told users what to do.

I studied the first 8 years in German, which proved very useful later on, as it gave me the opportunity to work in Austria and Germany and opened a lot of doors.