Martin Donchev
Technical Lead | Senior Software Engineer
Bio
The résumé version. The real story involves more Stack Overflow.
Technical Lead and Senior Software Engineer with over 20 years of experience building and scaling web applications across startups, agencies, and enterprise organizations.
Built an ad-serving platform from the ground up that grew to handle 18M daily impressions for clients including The New York Times and HuffPost — eventually leading a team of engineers and owning technical strategy across the entire organization.
Currently building frontend architecture for an AI-powered fintech platform at AxionEdge, following four years contributing to enterprise-scale tools at Via Transportation (NYSE: VIA), serving 400+ cities globally across a 1,300+ person organization.
Experienced across the full stack — React, Next.js, TypeScript, Node.js, AWS, Python, PHP, MongoDB, MySQL, Express, FastAPI, GraphQL — with a strong focus on frontend architecture, team leadership, and delivering clean, maintainable, high-quality solutions.
Skills
Things I can do. Some of them even on purpose.
Front-end
Languages: JavaScript (ES6+), TypeScript, HTML5, CSS3, SCSS
Frameworks: React 18+, Next.js, Astro, Shadcn/UI
State Management: MobX, Jotai, Redux
Architectural Expertise: Module Federation, Webpack, Vite, Babel, npm, Yarn
Testing: Jest, React Testing Library, Playwright
Cloud & Deployment: AWS, Docker, Kubernetes, CI/CD (Jenkins, GitLab CI, Github CI)
Design Systems: SCSS/SASS, PostCSS, Styled-Components, Tailwind CSS, Material-UI, Component
Libraries
Performance Optimization and Tooling: Responsive Design, Web Performance Optimization, Service
Workers and Progressive Web Apps (PWAs), Lighthouse and Core Web Vitals for performance monitoring, Code-splitting
and tree-shaking techniques, Sentry, MixPanel, mParticles
Accessibility: WCAG 2.1 Compliance, A11Y Best Practices
Version Control: Git, GitHub, GitLab
APIs and Backend Integration: RESTful APIs (using Axios or Fetch API), WebSockets and real-time
updates, Headless CMS (e.g., Strapi, Contentful), GraphQL, Server-Sent Events (SSE), WebSockets
Back-end
Amazon Web Services (AWS), NextJS, Node.js, Express, MongoDB, MySQL, Python, FastAPI, GraphQL, PHP,
CodeIgniter
Soft
Agile & Scrum Methodologies: Expert in fostering an agile environment, facilitating sprints,
and ensuring iterative delivery of high-quality features aligned with business objectives.
Code Quality Advocacy: Dedicated to maintaining clean, efficient, and maintainable codebases
through best practices, thorough code reviews, and continuous refactoring.
Mentorship & Knowledge Sharing: Experienced in guiding and growing engineers through constructive
feedback, structured learning sessions, and hands-on technical collaboration.
Collaboration & Team Building: Proven ability to work across cross-functional teams - designers,
backend developers, and product managers - to drive complex projects to successful delivery.
Adaptability to Emerging Technologies: Continuously evaluates and adopts modern tools, libraries,
and frameworks to improve team productivity and long-term project outcomes.
Cross-functional Collaboration: Proven ability to work across cross-functional teams - designers,
backend developers, and product managers - to drive complex projects to successful delivery.
Work Experience
Places that trusted me with production access.
2025 - PRESENT
SENIOR FRONTEND ENGINEER
AxionEdge
Part of a 14-person startup team building an AI-powered fintech platform that provides investment insights,
trading ideas, and sentiment analysis. The product is live and actively seeking Series A investment.
- Helped establish the core frontend architecture from the ground up
- Implementing real-time data monitoring using Server-Sent Events (SSE) and WebSocket communication for live market updates
- Building core platform features end-to-end in a fast-moving, high-ownership environment
2021 - 2005
SENIOR FRONTEND ENGINEER
Via Transportation (NYSE: VIA)
$3B public mobility technology company serving 700+ partners across 400+ cities globally
Rotated across three engineering teams in a 1,300+ person organization, gaining deep exposure to enterprise-scale
practices: CI/CD pipelines, QA regression workflows, cross-team coordination, and structured global deployment
schedules.
- Reduced weekly production errors from ~300 to under 90 through targeted optimization, enhanced error handling, and systematic debuggings
- Developed internal operator tools for real-time ride management across global markets
- Led creation of a city onboarding utility orchestrating API requests across multiple team endpoints; backend built with Python/FastAPI deployed via Serverless framework on AWS
- Built a mobile/tablet interface for riders to select destinations, view pricing, and purchase tickets in real time
2009 - 2021
TECHNICAL LEAD
Picklings Corp. LLC
Joined as sole developer and built the company's ad-serving platform from the ground up, scaling it to 18M
daily impressions for enterprise clients including The New York Times and HuffPost. Over 12 years, grew into
full technical ownership of the organization.
- Designed globally distributed, auto-scaling infrastructure on AWS ensuring high availability across multiple regions
- Created a project management platform for internal and client use, featuring task tracking, real-time chat, and video conferencing (Jitsi integration)
- Hired and led a team of 4 engineers as products grew; mentored developers and established development practices
- Expanded role to own all technical decisions company-wide: architecture, client solutions, and internal tooling
2002 - 2009
CO-FOUNDER & TECHNICAL LEAD
Lemon.bg
Directed technical strategy and operations, leading development of websites and web applications for clients.
Managed full project lifecycles, ensuring alignment between technical deliverables and business goals. Transformed
design mockups into responsive, pixel-perfect websites with cross-browser compatibility. Developed an internal
project management application for team productivity tracking.
Technologies: PHP, MySQL, JavaScript, jQuery, HTML, CSS, Flash
2001 - 2002
WEB DEVELOPER
Design.bg
Web development using PHP, MySQL, JavaScript, HTML/CSS, and Perl. Responsible for building and maintaining
client websites and web-based applications.
Key Projects
Projects that I'm particularly proud of.
Ad-Serving Platform
Company: Picklings Corp. LLC
A web-based, cloud-hosted ad-serving solution built from scratch and scaled to handle up to 18 million
daily impressions, serving high-profile clients including The New York Times and HuffPost.
Designed and implemented a globally distributed, auto-scaling infrastructure on AWS to ensure optimal performance
and availability across multiple regions. Built an intuitive administration interface and comprehensive reporting
tools providing clients with detailed analytics on ad performance and user behavior.
This project represented full end-to-end ownership — from initial architecture as the sole developer through
scaling, team hiring, and long-term platform evolution over 12 years.
Stack: PHP, CodeIgniter, React, Angular, AWS, MySQL
Operator Ride Management Tool
Company: Via Transportation
Core internal platform used by operators across all global partner offices to manage riders and
real-time ride bookings. Features included creating and scheduling rides, editing and monitoring active
trips, and comprehensive user management.
Built with TypeScript, React Query, and Module Federation within Via's internal design system (Material UI-based),
delivering a highly modular, performant interface that handled the operational complexity of 400+ cities
worldwide.
Stack: TypeScript, React, React Query, Module Federation, Material UI
City Onboarding Utility
Company: Via Transportation
Fundamental infrastructure tool for deploying Via's software to new cities — the central interface for
configuring every new market installation. Orchestrated API requests across multiple teams' endpoints to
set up production and development environments.
Essential to Via's global expansion, enabling standardized, efficient rollouts across diverse partner markets
worldwide.
Stack: React, TypeScript, Material UI (frontend) · Python, FastAPI, AWS Serverless
(backend)
Education
Before Stack Overflow existed.
1995 - 2000
TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY OF VARNA
Master Degree in Computer Science
1992 - 1995
ST. KLIMENT OHRIDSKI HIGH SCHOOL - VARNA
Programming and Mathematics
Contact
Please don't ask me to fix your printer.
Let's talk - whether it's a new opportunity, a technical challenge, or just a good engineering conversation.