I produce engaging UI/UX
Hello! My name is Octavian Cioaca and since 2006 I'm coding digital user journeys.
When I drink enough coffee, I like to read about complicated things until I have the impression they make sense.
Because I'm lazy, I use RPA (robotic process automation) for as many things I get the chance by using software like Ui Path, Blue Prism and Puppeteer.
A big part of my work is to review products development strategy, establish goals and lead consulting sessions with C-Level executives on the marketing, technical and design sides of client's business.
Frequently I'm taking ownership of the deliveries, timeliness and quality of the modules assigned while working on multiple projects at one time.
I build multidisciplinary teams and mentor developers/designers so that we get things done on time and within budget. You'll find out that I'm most comfortable in a workplace that has diversity, smart, happy and passionate people.
In my spare time I advise several startups and investors on technical and product matters. Upholder of "people first" principle.
Specialities
- Frond-End development
- RPA (robotic process automation) - UiPath, BluePrism
- financial analysis
- fintech development
- enterprise applications
- strategic partnerships
- talent and performance management
- strategy
- production, security and development
- operational efficiency
- crm & erp interfaces
- online gaming/betting systems
- apps built on top of facebook sdk, salesforce, netlog & google APIs
I've developed applications in these domains
- live support
- e-commerce
- banking
- custom traffic analytics
- digital analytics
- multimedia & fashion
- ad-tech, IoT
Experience
Visual Technology Officer
Sep 2017 - Present 📍 Paris, France
Visual Technology Officer @Addstones - a GFI group company
Sep 2017 - Present 📍 Paris, France
What are my responsibilities?
- In Addstones we have a UiPath RPA Center of Excellence and a Blue Prism RPA Center of Excellence. I'm leading both of them, while making sure the assigned teams are delivering our proposed automation solutions.
- Lead Visual Technology Lab at Addstones, a GFI group company.
- Manage Addstones Academy (in-house training programme for recent university graduates, junior developers and ui/ux designers)
- Evaluate talent pool and hire the right people for Addstones's projects.
- Build specialised teams (UI/UX, RPA and Big Data/Data Science areas) to deliver projects for top financial customers based in France, Singapore and Romania.
- Participate in digital transformation strategy planning with C-level executives and provide my input as specialist in the field.
- Showcase Addstones's pioneership in Industry 4.0 with POCs and MVPs.
- Establish partnerships with promising and creative technology startups.
Architect Front-End
July 2015 - July 2017 📍 Paris, France
Architect Front-End @CustomerMatrix
July 2015 - July 2017 📍 Paris, France
What were my responsibilities?
- Leading and hiring the UI team, making sure things are done on time and within budget.
- Encourage a culture of coding excellence, self organisation and learning.
- Work closely with the other tech leads to define and implement technical strategy for our cognitive computing platform.
- Coach and mentor team members and assist with their professional development by carrying out annual appraisals and planning on the job learning.
- Streamline the entire UI & UX development, remove the technical debt, implement new tools and help establish best practices.
- Develop atomic design systems
- Make recommendations regarding frameworks and other technologies, and help build the core front end that the other front end engineers and designers will lean on.
- Work on complex speed and scaling challenges as we expand to a global audience.
- Be involved in Product decisions.
- Work with a world class team on both sides of the Atlantic (New York & Paris).
What technologies have I used?
angularJS, angular2, angular material design, benchpress, jscs, jshint, es6, less, sass, grunt, D3js, gulp, npm, git, phantomjs, github, karma, jasmine, nightmarejs, protractor, sketch, typescript, bamboo, webpack, maven, scala, Sonatype Nexus, affinity designer, photoshop, principle, electron, frontify, eslint, triplestore, rdf 1.1, stardog, AWS
Project management, wiki & issue tracking done with: Confluence, jira, Invision, Frontify and Trello following Agile methodology.
Senior Front-End Engineer
May 2014 - June 2015 📍 Paris, France
Senior Front-End Engineer @Ifeelgoods
May 2014 - June 2015 📍 Paris, France
What were my responsibilities?
- I've coded a complex B2B SaaS Application using: AngularJS, rails, jenkins, grunt, phantomjs, protractor, angular ui bootstrap, angular material design, sass, aws, karma, jasmine, nock-vcr.
- When needed I've also updated the corporate website by doing custom wordpress work and making use of https://wpengine.com
- Coded a website that served a major digital reward campaign for MacDonald's France.
AngularJS Developer
January 2014 - April 2014 📍 Châtillon-Montrouge, France
AngularJS Developer @Orange (Orange Vallée)
January 2014 - April 2014 📍 Châtillon-Montrouge, France
What were my responsibilities?
- I've coded and integrated the AngularJS infrastructure of a responsive cloud app for multimedia (videos, photos, audios) storage and management, dedicated exclusively to Orange clients.
- Develop high-performance, reliable and maintainable code whether implementing architectural improvements, features, or fixing bugs
- Collaborate with other technical team members to design, implement, quickly troubleshoot and resolve any critical issues
- Stay in-tune with the latest technologies; proactively identify areas for improvement and propose viable solutions
What technologies have I used?
html5, css3, facebook js SDK, AngularJs, fileReader API, Jenkins, Protractor, bower, grunt, webRTC.
Project management, wiki & issue tracking done with: Mingle, Confluence, jira, Mantis following Kanban methodology.
AngularJS & webRTC Developer
December 2013 - April 2014 📍 Paris, France
AngularJS & webRTC Developer @Whojam
December 2013 - April 2014 📍 Paris, France
What were my responsibilities?
- I've coded and partially designed first Whojam MVP.
What technologies have I used?
web Audio API, webRTC, AngularJS with Rails RESTful API, Web Components, SASS, fileReader API, bower, grunt, git, postman, Facebook JS SDK.
Project management wiki & issue tracking done with Trello following Kanban method.
UI Lead Developer
June 2013 - December 2013 📍 Paris, France
UI Lead Developer @Verseau Paris
June 2013 - December 2013 📍 Paris, France
What were my responsibilities?
- I've coded and integrated user interfaces for some of VerseauParis french clients (Chateau Chenonceau, An Nissa, Coemy Group, Emeraude, Mademoiselle Fashion, Geomass, Foah Swim, SLA Paris, Devialet, Plateforme fenetre, Cake l'atelier)
What technologies have I used?
html5, css3, facebook SDK, angularJs, requireJs, capistrano, jQuery, inkscape, magento, smarty, doorgets, photoshop, git flow, sass, compass, markdown,silverstripe, svn, webGl, d3, gsap, google maps API, orbit, canvas animation, go lang, lighthttpd, rake, php, wordpress, CI(Jenkins), TDD(mocha, chai, jasmine, should, testacular, phantomjs), postman, interactive AxurePro prototypes, ruby on rails.
Project management wiki & issue tracking done with: Chili Project, Basecamp and Freckle following scrum methodology.
Senior Front-End Engineer
June 2012 - May 2013 📍 St. Julians, Malta
Senior Front-End Engineer @Nemea Bank
June 2012 - May 2013 📍 St. Julians, Malta
What were my responsibilities?
- Design, coding, testing and documenting of new business web interfaces as well enhancements to existing interfaces pertaining to the Bank’s systems
- Implementation and provision of on-going support of systems currently in use and contribution to the development and quality assurance procedures to ensure that systems perform the functions for which they were designed
- Creation and nalysis of design specifications, testing plans and of user instruction manuals to support the Bank’s systems.
- Provide help and support to less experienced members of the team on software development best practices and new technologies, especially HTML5, javascript & CSS3
What technologies have I used?
tomcat, maven, ant, activeMQ, JavaServer Pages, svn, git, html5, sass, css3, php, citrix vdi, interactive axurepro prototypes, MySql, javascript(require.js, mocha, chai, testem, jquery, regex, knockout.js)
Project management, wiki & issue tracking done with: jira and confluence following scrum methodology.
Lead UI Engineer
February 2012 - April 2013 📍 Donegal, Ireland
Lead UI Engineer @3D Issue
February 2012 - April 2013 📍 Donegal, Ireland
What were my responsibilities?
- I've coded and integrated user interfaces and software solutions for: digital magazines, digital e-learning, custom traffic analysis tools and audit software.
- Lead development efforts on large scale web-based projects, ensuring robust and lasting solutions are implemented
- Maintain existing CMS and JavaScript libraries: making sure they support the engineering and creative needs of 3dissue.com
- Mentor team members: Educate on software development best practices and new technologies, especially HTML5 & CSS3
What technologies have I used?
html5, css3, grails, spring, javascript, php, git, REST APIs, xml, curl, facebook open graph, yii, wordpress, composer, maxMind GeoIP, MySql, WorkBench & Heidi Sql.
Project management wiki & issue tracking done with: jira & tinyPM following scrum methodology.
Lead UI Engineer
March 2012 - May 2012 📍 New York, USA
Lead UI Engineer @1800 Postcards
March 2012 - May 2012 📍 New York, USA
What were my responsibilities?
- I’ve coded the user interface for the main website of the company.
What technologies have I used?
.net, .aspx, css3, sass, javascript, git, php, html5
Project management, wiki & issue tracking done with: jira and podio CRM following scrum methodology.
Front-End Engineer
February 2012 - May 2012 📍 Santa Barbara, California
Front-End Engineer @NetPlenish
February 2012 - May 2012 📍 Santa Barbara, California
What were my responsibilities?
- I’ve coded the user interface of www.shopgeniusapp.com previously known under www.netplenish.com (both of them not available anymore).
What technologies have I used?
javascript mvc framework, git, css3, sass, html5, php, jQuery, javascript
Lead UI Engineer
February 2012 - May 2012 📍 Bucharest, Romania
Lead UI Engineer @XL Team
February 2012 - May 2012 📍 Bucharest, Romania
What were my responsibilities?
- I've converted a e-commerce flash application to a cross device/platform html5 user interface.
What technologies have I used?
REST APIs, JAVA, JavaServer Pages, javascript, css3, sass, html5
Project management, wiki & issue tracking done with: DTM Tool following Kanban methodology.
Senior Front-End Engineer
September 2011 - December 2011 📍 Bucharest, Romania
Senior Front-End Engineer @eRepublik Labs Limited
September 2011 - December 2011 📍 Bucharest, Romania
What were my responsibilities?
- I've coded and integrated the user interface for as social soccer game called eTifosi (which has not been released publicly).
What technologies have I used?
REST APIs, php, javascript, css3, sass, html5, symfony php framework, git, jQuery, facebook js sdk.
Project management, wiki & issue tracking done with: confluence following scrum methodology.
Lead UI Engineer
September 2011 - December 2011 📍 Bucharest, Romania
Lead UI Engineer @Yahoo! Romania (mediacafe.ro)
September 2011 - December 2011 📍 Bucharest, Romania
What were my responsibilities?
- Code campaign websites, landing pages, newsletters and custom advertising solutions for over 8.2 million users each month.
- Helped companies lead, innovate and engage consumers in the digital universe.
- Work along with world class leaders such as Vodafone, P&G, Ing, HP, Adobe, Erste Group, Otp Bank
- Build a scalable front-end application in clear and beautiful code
- Deliver a better user experience
- Work closely with the backend team and help making decisions
- Contributing to the continual improvement of our design and development process
- Working with backend engineering, product management and community/customer care to solve problems and fix bugs
What technologies have I used?
django, python, sass, css3, html5, javascript, git, extjs, php, netlog api, joomla, wordpress, facebook js sdk.
Front-End Engineer
May 2008 - February 2009 📍 Bucharest, Romania
Front-End Engineer @eMag.ro
May 2008 - February 2009 📍 Bucharest, Romania
What were my responsibilities?
- Create easy to understand, simple yet compelling and visually enticing page designs to help deliver the company objectives and KPI’s for all products, across all platforms - PC, mobile and tablet. You'll be responsible for the visual look and layout of the website's interactive experience, including the interaction and journeys customers follow
- Help execute Product strategy and manage the development, implementation and full lifecycle of projects
- Research and specify new site features and enhancements to existing features
- Monitor, conduct analysis and evaluate the impact of experiments using a combination of web analytics, user analysis, user surveys and internal tools
- Document the details and impact of experiments and new features
- Work closely with senior management and engineering teams during all stages of delivery
- Coding the interface for a promotional betting system for UEFA Euro 2008
What technologies have I used?
smarty, php, sass, css, html5, javascript, svn, jquery
Project management, wiki & issue tracking done with: The Trac Project and Zoho CRM
Front-End Engineer
October 2007 - May 2008 📍 Bucharest, Romania
Front-End Engineer @Net Rom Business
October 2007 - May 2008 📍 Bucharest, Romania
What were my responsibilities?
- Develop and maintaining e-commerce applications and presentational websites
- Deliver best-in-class front-end code across web and mobile projects
- Ability to work in a volatile environment, and constantly collaborate with the design team to improve and take the projects to the next level
- Be open-minded & proactive, don’t settle for what is required
- Work with client services, sales, and the design team, and manage time across multiple projects and tasks in a deadline-driven environment
- Understand outstanding design, execution and interactions
- Participate in discussions with clients and team members about technical best practices and help teams identify optimal technical solutions.
What technologies have I used?
CakePhp, Zend Framework, Smarty, PHP, SQL, css, html, javascript
Front-End Engineer
March 2006 - September 2007 📍 Bucharest, Romania
Front-End Engineer @Karena.ro
March 2006 - September 2007 📍 Bucharest, Romania
What were my responsibilities?
- Coding the php custom cms of www.karena.ro
- Building a leading brand for weeding market and the most loved digital magazine in Romania for future brides.
What technologies have I used?
PyroCMS, magento, PrestaShop, php 5, mysql, xml, json
Accomplishments
Education
- codility golden certificate omega 2013
- javaScript developer certificate (w3schools.com) 2012
- html developer certificate (w3schools.com) 2008
- winner national antidrug web page contest 2007
- CS certification ("Grigore Moisil" Highschool) 2007
Awards
- winner French-American Business Awards 2015
- shortlisted @ Cannes Lions 2010
- gold @ Sabre European Awards 2010
- online project of the year @ Business Review Awards 2010
- IPRA golden trophy 2009
References
Gilles André
Co-Founder & CEO at CustomerMatrix
July 6, 2017, Gilles managed Octavian directly
Octavian, is a magician. He has this very enviable talent to solve complex problems with an apparent ease which I call "Elegance". He understands that technology is a mean and user adoption the goal which is critical to lead UX development.
Beyond being one of the most impressive developer I ever met, he is innovative, inspirational, committed, reliable and always matches deadlines.
On top of any innovation in the market, Octavian has this very rare instinct to select what is now and disruptive and what is next as not mature enough.
Last, Octavian is a great person, open, direct, transparent and supportive. I wish Octavian all the success he deserves in his new venture and thank him for everything he brought to me and CustomerMatrix.
Michael Amar
Co-founder & CEO Ifeelgoods, Inc.
May 1, 2015, Michael was senior to Octavian
Octavian is a broad skilled developer that lead our company's efforts to keep our codebase up to date with the latest technology stack in our front-end engineering department.
If you need someone loyal, committed and ready to be 200% into it, he's your guy. I have genuinely found him to be knowledgeable and forward thinking.
With my experience to date working with Octavian I would have no problem recommending him.
Paul McNulty
Founder & CEO @ 3D Issue
March 14, 2012, Paul was a client of Octavian’s
I had the good fortune to work with Octavian in the first half of 2012 to develop a complex front end for our dynamic content builder application.
He is a fantastic programmer who has a real passion for technology. His work is always exemplary and delivered on time.
Contact
I'm currently living in Paris, France and you can send me your thoughts at ✉ octasimo@gmail.com
Online everywhere with nickname octasimo
- linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/octasimo
- twitter: https://twitter.com/octasimo
- github: https://github.com/octasimo