About

I'm Plamen Zheliazkov, a systems and software engineer in Sofia. I got into computers in the 90s and never really stopped, and for nearly twenty years the work has been the same: run the infrastructure, build the software on top of it or finding solutions, tracing/debugging and being a bit on the business side too. I like to understand the whole stack, and I like to understand the trade-offs of each decision.

Most of that time was Linux. For nine years at a 700-employee retail group I jointly ran an almost entirely Linux estate of more than thirty servers and six hundred endpoints across fifteen-plus sites. On top of it I built the business systems and ERP integrations, in PHP and Java: an SMS platform in Spring that sent customers their order notifications, a partner portal, mobile reporting for management, and in C++, part of an in-store footfall counting system on Raspberry Pi. Later came on-premises Linux, networking and object storage for an ML team, Symfony applications for an insurer and a qualified trust service provider, and a billing platform in Laravel at a US payments company, where I brought generated API documentation, static analysis and E2E testing into the build.

I've written PHP since the PHP 5 days, and Laravel is what I reach for on most business web applications. On the front end, React and Next.js with TypeScript these days. Java SE/EE/Vaadin/Spring/Android experience. Alongside all of it, since 2008, technical consulting for small and mid-sized businesses.

Right now I'm working in containers, CI/CD and infrastructure as code. If you have something interesting - a project, a role, or a problem that won't go away - write to me.