Skip to content

Building software
since 2004

Antoan Popov — Engineering Manager and TypeScript engineer

Engineering Manager and full-stack TypeScript engineer based in Varna, Bulgaria. I started writing HTML in 2004 from a tutorial I found on a floppy disk. Built my first paid project at 16. Twenty years later I'm still writing code and leading the teams that ship it.

The first decade was PHP and MySQL — pushing relational databases past their nested-join limits, and building a Windows desktop app in C# that took a translation company from 2,000 to 40,000 words per day.

The last decade-plus has been exclusively JavaScript and TypeScript: Node.js on the backend; React, Angular, React Native, and Next.js on the front. Along the way: cross-platform component libraries, real-time trading platforms, medical-device companion apps, application-security tooling.

  • Cross-platform component libraries — React Native + react-native-web → shared UI between mobile and web, with auto-generated Storybook for designers.

  • Untangle performance disasters — Most recently: refactored a 30k-line server.js by moving heavy Kafka order-book traffic into worker threads. Same runtime, dramatically lower latency.

  • Lead frontend & full-stack teams — 5–10 engineers as Software Architect or Engineering Manager. Hands-on — I write code with the team and stay close to the work.

  • Set technical direction — Stack selection, architecture foundations, CI/CD, testing strategy, performance budgets for new projects.

  • Engineering Management
  • TypeScript
  • React / Next.js
  • React Native
  • Node.js
  • Worker Threads
  • KafkaJS
  • Software Architecture
  • Cross-platform UI
  • Storybook
  • Fintech
  • Crypto
  • MedTech

I lead hands-on. I write code with the team, review PRs, and stay close to the work. I don't believe a senior engineer who stops writing code is still a senior engineer.

I'm drawn to the parts of a codebase that everyone else has given up on — the 30,000-line server.js that “just can't be faster” or the legacy component that “we don't touch anymore.” Most of the time the runtime isn't the problem. The architecture is.

I think a lot about readability. Most code is read far more than it's written, and the discipline of writing code your future colleagues will thank you for is — in my experience — the single highest-leverage skill in the field.

  • Open to remote roles as Engineering Manager or Senior/Staff IC
  • Modernizing pearlskin.net (Laravel 13, React)
  • Considering whether the JS ecosystem really needs another monorepo tool