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Engineering Leader

Kristi Buda

Building products from scratch, leading international teams, and turning complex ideas into solutions used worldwide.

Kristi Buda
About

Turning complexity into clarity.

Over a decade of building complex software systems, leading engineering teams across multiple countries, and turning ambitious ideas into products that scale. I thrive at the intersection of technology and leadership, where architecture decisions meet business outcomes.

01

Strategic Leadership

Led large-scale projects spanning Engineering, Design, Data Engineering and AI/ML. Enhanced team performance by scaling cross-functional teams through data-driven approaches.

02

Engineering Solutions

Designed data extraction pipelines processing billions of records. Built complex data structures enabling instant creation and updates in constant time.

03

Core Competencies

Advanced organisational strategy, engineering operations, strategic leadership, and architecture implementation.

Experience

Built across borders and industries.

Creating products from scratch, collaborating with international companies, and leading projects from inception to fully-fledged solutions used worldwide.

Founder

Marvio
2025 - Present London, UK

AI engineering firm that unlocks hidden capacity in businesses by replacing manual workflows and operational bottlenecks with custom-built intelligent systems.

  • Leading frontend architecture and engineering for Raft, driving the platform's technical direction and delivery.
  • Designed and built a real-time collaboration engine for Raft, enabling concurrent editing across distributed users.
  • Architected a high-throughput, high-concurrency service for a refinance company, engineered to handle large volumes of simultaneous users under heavy load.
  • Built agentic AI integrations, connecting autonomous agents into client workflows to automate complex multi-step processes.

Engineering Manager

Causaly
2025 - Present London, UK

AI platform transforming how humans acquire, structure, and interpret biomedical knowledge across large-scale scientific datasets.

  • Led engineering for the company's most strategic vertical, positioned to become a primary driver of company growth.
  • Built the core platform for large-scale scientific data extraction using streaming, agent-driven pipelines with parallel LLM processing to ingest and structure heterogeneous research datasets.
  • Delivered the end-to-end pilot in direct partnership with one of the world's largest biotechnology organisations, entrusted with multi-billion-dollar proprietary research datasets.
  • Led delivery of cloud-agnostic private infrastructure across multiple isolated environments for secure automated multi-cloud deployments.
  • Led a team of 8 engineers across Data, Application Engineering, and DevOps with an average experience of 15 years.
  • Led the company-wide deployment automation strategy, transforming releases from 2 per week to daily, eventually achieving fully automated Continuous Delivery.
  • Built hiring pipelines for Agentic Engineering, evaluating applicants on autonomous systems design and applied LLM delivery capability.
  • Led development of Identity and User Management systems and deployment orchestration across cloud-agnostic private environments.
  • Maintained a hands-on leadership approach, coding across all domains from IAM services to data extraction pipelines supporting NLP engineers.
Tech: Node.js, React, Functional Programming, AWS, GCP, Azure, Claude, OpenAI, Kubernetes (EKS), Argo Workflows, Terraform, Kafka, Redis Streams, RabbitMQ, Datadog, CloudWatch, Elasticsearch, Kibana, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, S3, SQS, KEDA

Engineering Manager

tldraw
2025 London, UK

Open-source SDK enabling world-class companies to build infinite canvas applications with real-time multiplayer capabilities.

  • Owned the full engineering function, reporting directly to the CEO.
  • Designed and implemented end-to-end engineering processes from scratch, transforming a processless environment into a high-performance team.
  • Implemented a dual-track agile workflow to drive continuous product discovery while maintaining strong delivery momentum.
  • Contributed directly to the core product by designing and shipping new user-facing features.
  • Developed internal data infrastructure and ETL pipelines to empower other departments with actionable insights.
  • Defined and executed the customer success and support strategy, significantly improving user retention and satisfaction.
  • Built scalable hiring pipelines for engineering and quality assurance to support team growth.
  • Owned company-wide roadmapping processes, aligning technical execution with strategic business objectives.
  • Architected team structure and development strategy to support long-term scale, incorporating robust QA and delivery practices.
Tech: React, NodeJS, Vercel, Redis, AWS, Upstash, Supabase, PostHog, Grafana, PostgreSQL, Clerk, Hubspot, Clay

Engineering Manager

Raft
2022 - 2025 London, UK

AI platform for freight forwarders and customs brokers, automating document processing, finance workflows, and customer operations.

  • Spearheaded company-wide engineering strategy, driving innovation and aligning technical initiatives with business objectives.
  • Led and mentored a high-performing engineering team of 30+, fostering a culture of continuous learning and cutting-edge technology adoption.
  • Developed and implemented a robust performance management framework, enhancing productivity and accelerating career growth for engineers and team leads.
  • Optimized technical debt management while consistently delivering scalable, high-quality software solutions on time and within budget.
  • Bridged communication gaps between technical and non-technical stakeholders, ensuring clear understanding and alignment of engineering projects across the organization.
  • Headed the Research and Development department, driving process improvement, efficiency gains, and innovation for future company growth.
  • Orchestrated multiple software engineering projects, ensuring seamless collaboration across teams and departments for successful execution and completion.
  • Restructured recruitment pipelines for product and engineering, optimizing processes to attract and retain top talent, enhancing team performance and project outcomes.
  • Scaled the Vision team from a research project to a vital company pillar, focusing on innovation crucial to overall success.
  • Developed growth roadmaps to guide engineers' professional advancement, facilitating progression into advanced roles.
  • Spearheaded the creation of a highly efficient data processing pipeline handling millions of records daily for multiple organizations.
  • Managed projects across departments, implementing a sophisticated in-app data search engine and overseeing a multi-database system for seamless data processing.
  • Designed and built a high-performance, event-driven microservice architecture to extract, transform, and load data across teams.
  • Implemented a multi-database querying system for retrieving data from various PostgreSQL databases.
Tech: Python, FastAPI, Flask, React, Redux, JavaScript, Golang, Celery, RabbitMQ, Kafka, Elastic Search, Logstash, Kibana, Liquibase, MongoDB, PostgreSQL, Neo4J, Docker, Kubernetes, Google Cloud Platform, DataDog, Grafana, NestJs, Cassandra, Airflow, Websockets, Atomic Design, Alembic, Unleash

Lead Engineer

Polyteia
May 2018 - Dec 2021 Berlin, Germany

Smart Governance Platform for cities and towns, helping mayors, treasurers, and department heads make smart decisions with better data.

  • Headed the development of an advanced dashboard builder for data analysts.
  • Led Front-End development, crafting an intuitive UI and architecting the platform's structure.
  • Engineered the architecture for the desktop app version.
  • Developed a custom state management library for the platform's data bridge.
  • Contributed to the distributed system structure, emphasizing scalability and reliability.
Tech: React, Redux, GraphQL, Electron, Jest, Puppeteer, Cypress, React-vis, D3, NodeJS, NestJS, JavaScript, Telekom Cloud

Head of Frontend

Publer
Jul. 2017 - Sep. 2018 Tirana, Albania

Virtual Social Media Superhero for scheduling and analyzing posts across Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram.

  • Orchestrated the development of a seamless front-end architecture.
  • Designed and implemented the user interface and company branding.
  • Collaboratively worked with cross-functional teams.
Tech: React, React-redux, Recharts, JavaScript, Ruby on Rails, AWS, Redis, PostgreSQL, Docker, Kubernetes

Senior Engineer & Technical Lead

Cross-Industry, International
Aug. 2014 - May 2021 Albania, Germany & Remote

Built products end-to-end across social media, fintech, enterprise SaaS, e-commerce, and non-profit sectors, working with organisations ranging from early-stage startups to companies like Siemens, Universal Music, and MyMuesli.

  • Served as lead engineer on multiple projects across various platforms and industries, designing and implementing core architectures from the ground up.
  • Built and shipped modern web and mobile applications for international clients across diverse verticals.
  • Developed custom state management solutions, search engines, continuous delivery pipelines, and internal tooling.
  • Designed user interfaces and brand identities, bridging the gap between engineering and design.
  • Led teams of engineers to successful project completion, collaborating with product managers on evaluations and estimations.
Tech: React, Redux, React-Native, NodeJS, Ruby on Rails, GraphQL, JavaScript, MongoDB, PostgreSQL, MySQL, AWS, Docker, Kubernetes, Firebase, Parse Platform
Education

BSc Computer Science

University of Tirana
Oct. 2014 - Sep 2019 Tirana, Albania

Albania's oldest and largest public university. The ICT program is designed to equip students with practical system implementation and a comprehensive understanding of computer technology.

Supplemental Activities

Data for Local Environments Challenge

IDSP, Microsoft, LinkedIn, ODI, UKPN
2023 London, UK

Partnership using open data to address societal challenges and reach net-zero goals.

  • Designed a secure data architecture combining 8 different data sources.
  • Conducted deep analysis on energy usage in public buildings.
  • Developed a no-code data tool to assess power availability and calculate CO2 emissions reduction per school.

Lead Engineer

Lesido
2021 - 2022 Munich, Germany

Interactive access to hundreds of award-winning picture books via video chat.

  • Built the front-end and mobile architecture.
  • Led development and built a custom book reader.

Jury Member & Speaker

betaPlan / Hack for Albania
2021 Tirana, Albania

2-day hackathon engaging young engineers in finding solutions for current problems.

  • Served as tech consultant, reviewed solutions, and awarded winning teams.
  • Presented on "How to build better UX based on data."

Lead Engineer

Yunar by Ambidexter
2019 - 2020 Berlin, Germany

Digital wallet for loyalty cards.

  • Developed the company website, created CMS, and built custom component localization.

Co-Founder

Jellyfish
2018 - 2019 Tirana, Albania

Customized web and mobile solutions through cutting-edge technologies.

  • Guided technical direction, crafted user interfaces, and engineered architectural solutions for diverse clients.

Conference Speaker

OSCAL & SFK19
2018 Tirana & Prishtina

Talked about building faster React applications at OSCAL. Presented a gentle introduction to WebAssembly at SFK19.