Rali Ralev, Senior Software Engineer at Funding Circle team @ Questers
Tell us a bit about yourself, your educational and professional background?
I started programming in high school, and since then, it became my passion. After my graduation, I started my first job in the industry. Back then, I was 19 years old. Later, I switched a few companies and tech stacks. Believe this gave me a broad outlook and many perspectives. I’ve worked with .NET, Java, Ruby, JavaScript and consider myself a technology-agnostic person. I never really understood why people constantly fight religiously about a certain technology or a programming language.
You were one of the first team members in the Funding Circle team back in 2015, and after a little break, you’ve recently joined it for a second time. What made you leave in 2018, and what made you come back?
I’ve always felt that little entrepreneurial spark inside of me. So, at the beginning of 2018, I decided to give it a go. I founded a start-up company with a few friends. It was an amazing experience that gave me an opportunity to combine programming with another thing that I love - trading.
I rejoined the Funding Circle team because of the people. My colleagues are very strong engineers and exceptional professionals. This is important if you want to stay on top. Furthermore, FinTech and especially P2P lending is still a hot topic, and there is so much to happen in that space.
Most of your old colleagues are still in the team, but there are a lot of new team members as well. How do you find the team now? What has changed, and what remained the same?
The more colleagues, the better. We used to be 5-6 people in the past, which was not bad at all. Back then, we were able to handle all the critical stuff and had lots of fun together, but now we have a bigger capacity and can handle even more challenges.
I can say that the thing that remained the same is the team spirit. Luckily, the guys keep the amazing company culture.
With the expansion of the Funding Circle division in Sofia, the number of projects has grown as well. Tell us what you are currently working on. Can you also share some details about the other projects your colleagues are engaged with?
Currently, we are implementing additional functionalities which will support borrowers that experience some struggles with their loans because of Covid-19. These new features will improve the longevity of so many businesses, and it really makes me proud to be working on them. One such functionality is part of our forbearance tools - the interest-only plans. It allows the borrowers to have the option to repay only the interest for a certain period of time. This would result in cutting monthly cost and sustaining their businesses.
What about the tech stack? How has it evolved since you last worked in the team?
The tech stack is constantly improving. Teams spent quite an effort to keep up all the projects with the latest trends. If you like buzz words - Funding Circle is the place. Clojure, Kafka, Prometheus, Event Sourcing are waiting for those who want to get their hands dirty. Тhe stack hаs evolved a lot from an infrastructure point of view. In the past, we used to deploy with Capistrano, now everything is containerized, and we use CircleCI, Mesos and Marathon to smooth out the shipment process.
What do you like the most in the Funding Circle team at Questers?
One word - colleagues. There is no doubt about that. Definitely, what I like the most is the people I work with. By collaborating with such talented people, you become a better professional and evolve every day. That makes me feel happy and useful. We constantly support each other, have fun together, and thus workflow seems super pleasant.
Keen to be part of such an amazing team? Check out the vacancies we currently have for the Funding Circle team at Questers.