alex-dolid.devOpen to Solution Architect and Staff+ roles

trace_id · 2016 → 2026 · 9 spans

Alex Dolid

Solution Architect · Founding Engineer

I design systems that survive their own growth.

Seven years in engineering, the last four owning architecture end to end. At Hirevel I acted as CTO: designed the whole system, ran every deployment, and took infrastructure cost down 40% while holding 99% uptime. At Sisense I build backend services for enterprise-scale analytics. And when the authorization engine I wanted did not exist in-process, I published one — @alexify/kerberos.

Lutsk, Ukraine · Open to Solution Architect and Staff+ roles

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Numbers, with sources

Architect, build, operate

  1. Architect

    Turn business intent into a system with boundaries that hold.

    • Domain modelling with DDD and Onion layering
    • Explicit trade-offs: cost, performance, maintainability, speed
    • Data models, API contracts, service boundaries
    • PoCs and spikes before commitment, not after

  2. Build

    Ship it, and keep the codebase worth working in.

    • Node.js and TypeScript across NestJS, Fastify and Express
    • Test strategy from unit to end-to-end, not coverage theatre
    • Reusable internals that speed up the whole team
    • Code review as the place standards actually get set

  3. Operate

    Own it in production, where the design is finally judged.

    • Monitoring, logging, metrics and production diagnostics
    • Root-cause analysis over workarounds
    • Releases and migrations without critical incidents
    • Infrastructure cost as an engineering variable
  1. 01

    The domain owes nothing to the framework

    Business rules live in a layer that does not know what HTTP, the ORM or the cloud provider are. Everything outside that layer is replaceable, and eventually gets replaced.

  2. 02

    Pay debt before it compounds

    Technical debt is cheap to service early and impossible to service late. I find it and clear it while it is still a refactor rather than a rewrite.

  3. 03

    Trade-offs are the job

    Cost, performance, maintainability and delivery speed are one decision, not four. Cutting Hirevel infrastructure by 40% was a design choice, not a discount.

  4. 04

    Automate instead of repeating

    Anything done by hand twice becomes generated, scripted or codified — including the parts of engineering that AI tooling now does better than a human typing.

  5. 05

    One engineer can replace five specialists

    A product engineer who owns architecture, delivery, DevOps, quality and support carries a product further than five people who each own a slice of it. That was the whole job at Hirevel.

Career trace

// newest first · axis runs 2016 → 2026, left to right

  1. sisense

    1 yr

    Sisense — Enterprise analytics platformNew York, United States

    1. ↳ senior_software_engineer

      Aug 2025 — Jul 2026 · 1 yr
      • logOwned design and delivery of backend services behind enterprise-scale analytics products.
      • logDrove architecture trade-offs where performance, maintainability and delivery speed compete.
      • logTook production ownership: root-cause analysis and long-term fixes instead of workarounds.
      • logOptimised APIs, database access, caching and async workflows across a distributed system.
      • logMentored engineers and held architectural consistency across services.

    Node.js · TypeScript · Distributed systems · Observability · Caching

  2. hirevel

    1 yr 7 mos

    Hirevel — Acting CTOTallinn, Estonia

    1. ↳ founding_engineer

      Feb 2024 — Aug 2025 · 1 yr 7 mos
      • logSole owner of architecture, infrastructure and every engineering decision — acting CTO.
      • logDesigned 100% of the system architecture and data models; delivered 100% of the backend and DevOps.
      • logCut infrastructure spend 40% through deliberate trade-offs, without giving up headroom after launch.
      • logRan every deployment, release and migration: zero critical incidents at launch, 99% uptime.
      • logTurned product intent into epics at 95% estimation accuracy; 90% of milestones landed on time.
      • logSupervised a front-end engineer and shipped 50% of the front end myself.

    Node.js · NestJS · MongoDB Atlas · Auth0 · Cerbos · Fly.io · React

  3. captify

    2 yrs 10 mos

    Captify — Search intelligence / adtechLondon, United Kingdom

    1. ↳ senior_full_stack_engineer

      Aug 2023 — Feb 2024 · 7 mos
      • logTechnical lead on several epics; owned design decisions and defended them in review.
      • logGo-to expert on the codebase — evolved the system for future requirements and defined its SLAs.
      • logTackled technical debt before it grew into work that needed a rewrite to unwind.
      • logMentored engineers through pairing, design review and code review.
      • logProduced the quarterly planning documents and estimates the team planned against.

    2. ↳ middle_full_stack_developer

      May 2021 — Aug 2023 · 2 yrs 4 mos
      • logKey developer on the product: full-stack features from scratch on React, MobX, Node.js and PostgreSQL.
      • logUnit, integration and end-to-end coverage with Jest, React Testing Library and Cypress.
      • logEnd-to-end ownership on projects of growing complexity, including cross-team shared code.

    Node.js · React · MobX · PostgreSQL · Jest · Cypress

  4. cityhub

    9 mos

    Cityhub — FintechKyiv, Ukraine

    1. ↳ junior_middle_front_end_developer

      Sep 2020 — May 2021 · 9 mos
      • logBuilt SPA and PWA products from scratch — Vue with Vuex (70%), React with Redux-Saga (30%).
      • logOwned feature design and split delivery across front end (80%) and back end (20%).
      • logDrove refactoring and performance work; introduced back-end technologies to the team.

    Vue · Vuex · React · Redux-Saga · TypeScript · Express · MongoDB

  5. sterling

    7 mos

    Sterling Web Agency — Outsource & outstaffingKyiv, Ukraine

    1. ↳ front_end_developer

      Mar 2020 — Sep 2020 · 7 mos
      • logDelivered client projects from scratch on React with Redux-Saga (90%) and Vue with Vuex (10%).
      • logPlanned features end to end and broke them into deliverable tasks.
      • logContributed to refactoring and performance initiatives.

    React · Redux-Saga · Vue · SCSS · Webpack

  6. jooble

    2 yrs 10 mos

    Jooble — Job search productKyiv, Ukraine

    // Where it started: three years inside a job-search product before writing code for one.

    1. ↳ vacancy_editor

      May 2019 — Sep 2019 · 5 mos
      • logManaged a team of moderators, owned quality of work, mentored teammates.

    2. ↳ vacancy_moderator

      Apr 2019 — May 2019 · 2 mos
      • logPost-moderation and classification of vacancy flows against product rules.

    3. ↳ content_manager_crawler_mapper

      Dec 2016 — Apr 2019 · 2 yrs 5 mos
      • logScraped vacancy data from source sites and mapped fields for the crawler.

    Data mapping · Crawling · Team lead

Span detail

  1. ↑ hirevel

    Built a product as its only engineer, then made it cheap to run

    context
    Hirevel was pre-launch with a product team of three non-engineers. There was no architecture, no infrastructure, and no one else to defer a decision to.
    decision
    Took the acting CTO seat: chose the stack against runway rather than fashion, designed the data models and layering up front, and treated infrastructure cost as an engineering constraint from day one instead of a bill to discover later.
    outcome
    Designed the whole system, delivered the whole backend and all of DevOps, and ran every release and migration personally through launch and beyond.
    • −40%infrastructure spendagainst the pre-launch baseline
    • 99%uptimepost-launch production
    • 0critical incidentsacross live launches and migrations

  2. ↑ sisense

    Made an enterprise analytics backend answer for itself

    context
    Enterprise-scale analytics services with distributed workloads, where a slow query and an outage are the same problem at different magnitudes, and incidents were being closed with workarounds.
    decision
    Pushed ownership upstream: root-cause analysis instead of patches, then reworked APIs, database access, caching and asynchronous workflows against the causes that analysis surfaced. Invested in monitoring, logging and production diagnostics so the next investigation started with data.
    outcome
    Reliability and debugging workflows improved measurably, and reusable internal components cut the cost of every feature the team shipped afterwards.
    • RCAover workarounds, as the defaultproduction incident policy
    • Multi-servicearchitectural consistency heldacross owned services

  3. ↑ captify

    Grew from key developer to the person the architecture answered to

    context
    A search-intelligence platform where feature velocity kept outrunning the system design, and technical debt was being logged rather than paid.
    decision
    Became the go-to expert on the codebase, then used that position to set direction: defined SLAs, defended design decisions in review, and cleared debt while it was still a refactor. Wrote the quarterly planning documents the team estimated against.
    outcome
    Led several epics as technical lead, mentored engineers through pairing and design review, and evolved the system to carry requirements that did not exist when it was designed.
    • 2 yrs 10 mosMiddle to Senior on one productCaptify, 2021 — 2024
    • Epic-leveltechnical leadershipmultiple cross-team epics

Recommendations

// written on LinkedIn by the people who managed the work · quoted verbatim

  1. ↑ hirevel

    Alex wasn’t just our Chief Software Engineer — he was our technical backbone.
    full recommendation

    Working with Alex Dolid was one of the best decisions we made at Hirevel and our other ventures.

    Alex wasn’t just our Chief Software Engineer — he was our technical backbone. He led everything from System Architecture and DevOps to Full-Stack engineering and technical planning. He took full ownership, made smart, cost-effective decisions, and delivered results fast—with no compromises on quality or stability.

    Beyond his deep technical skills, what stood out most was his business mindset. Alex always aligned engineering with our goals, helped us move faster, and brought clarity and structure to the product process. His ability to think strategically and still get into the technical trenches is rare and incredibly valuable.

    If you’re looking for someone who will treat your product like it’s their own — Alex is that person.

    Juho OranenEntrepreneur | CEO | People & Growth | Workforce solutions for tech and operational rolesManaged Alex directly · Jul 15, 2025

  2. ↑ captify

    He consistently demonstrated the skills of a senior engineer and a future technical leader.
    full recommendation

    I had the pleasure of managing Alex on the Sense team at Captify. He consistently demonstrated the skills of a senior engineer and a future technical leader. He was the architect and key contributor of a number of high-impact projects i.e a suite of benchmarking, alerting, and monitoring tools build using a custom-integrated K6 library, Prometheus, and Grafana, covering all our services and batch processes, significantly improving operational efficiency and support response times. On top of this he consistently contributed towards reducing our technical debt, mentored junior teammates, and clarified complex planning and estimation work items for the team. In my personal opinion, any team would benefit from his sense (no pun intended) of ownership, technical excellence, positive attitude, and collaborative mindset. I myself highly recommend, and vouch for him personally.

    Lukasz SzczesiakDirector of Engineering @ pubX.ai | Engineering Manager | Software Engineer | Tech LeadManaged Alex directly · Jul 14, 2025

Consultancy

// same axis as the career trace — advisory, alongside the day job · scope described to the depth each NDA allows

Open source

// same axis as the career trace — these ran alongside the job, not after it

  1. @alexify/kerberos

    Dec 2024 — Present

    Authorization that runs inside your app

    Author and maintainer

    • v3.1.0
    • MIT
    • Zero runtime dependencies
    • ~25 KB min+gzip
    • Node ≥18 · browser
    • logCerbos-compatible policy engine — resource, principal and role policies, derived roles, conditions and variables.
    • logReBAC without a Zanzibar cluster: a SpiceDB-inspired resolver with unions, intersections and exclusions.
    • logReturns Cerbos-compatible query plans as condition trees, so authorization pushes down into SQL and MongoDB filters.
    • logSub-millisecond in-process decisions, structured audit logging and optional OpenTelemetry traces.
    • logDeclarative Cerbos-style test DSL, so policies are tested like code.

    Docs ↗npm ↗Source ↗

  2. @alexify/migronaut

    Jul 2026 — Present

    Elegant MongoDB migrations for Node.js

    Author and maintainer

    • v1.0.0
    • MIT
    • Zero runtime dependencies
    • TypeScript-first
    • Node ≥22.18
    • logReal rollbacks — revert a batch, a number of steps, or a single migration file.
    • logSafe by default: atomic MongoDB locks with heartbeat renewal and SHA-256 checksums over every migration.
    • logOpt-in transactions, lifecycle hooks and dry-run previews before anything touches the database.
    • logAppend-only changelog recording duration, checksum, environment, user and batch — audit-ready.
    • logImports existing migrate-mongo changelogs without data loss.

    Docs ↗npm ↗Source ↗

  • Metarhia CommunityMember

    Node.js architecture community around the Metarhia stack — the source of a lot of how I think about layering.

Tools of record

Hard skills

Architecture
DDD · Onion / layered · Modular monolith · Microservices · SOLID · GRASP · GoF · Event-driven · REST · RPC · WebSockets
Backend
Node.js · TypeScript · NestJS · Fastify · Express · Metarhia
Data
MongoDB · Atlas · PostgreSQL · Redis · Elasticsearch
DevOps
Docker · AWS · Fly.io · Vercel · Heroku · GitHub Actions · TeamCity · Nx
Identity
Auth0 · Clerk · Cerbos
Observability
New Relic · Sentry · Prometheus · Grafana · Pino · Winston
Quality
Playwright · Cypress · Vitest · Jest
Frontend
React · Vue · Electron · React Native · Expo
AI in the loop
Claude Code · Cursor · Agent skills & workflows
Learning
Metarhia stack · Platformatic · Kubernetes · AWS (depth)

Soft skills

Hard-working and ambitious, with a standing habit of courses, professional reading and English practice. Lifelong learning is the cornerstone of the job, not something done beside it.

Study and languages

2025 — 2027
Master's degree, Computer Software Engineering — Lutsk National Technical University
2016 — 2020
Bachelor's degree, Trade and Stock Exchange Activity — State University of Trade and Economics
Languages
Ukrainian — Native · English — C1 Advanced
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