Sofia, Bulgaria
Anton Zavidonov
Engineering Lead · Product Builder
Engineering lead with 10+ years of hands-on development, including C++ and embedded systems, and experience managing engineering teams.
I build my own products from framing the problem through implementation—owning architecture, delivery, and product trade-offs along the way.
Featured Projects
WaysToTravel
Co-founder
MVP shipped
An AI service for finding interesting places for road trips and weekend getaways.
Planning a car trip usually means jumping between maps, reviews, and scattered lists—without a clear sense of which stops are actually worth the detour for a given route and timeframe.
As co-founder I help frame the problem, define the MVP, develop the web product, plan iterations, and adjust based on feedback after release.
Status: MVP shipped. Stack: Next.js, Supabase (PostgreSQL and Auth), Vercel.
Visit website
Pause
iOS
Prototype / technical validation
My iOS project for more intentional phone use.
Opening an app is often automatic—a habit rather than a choice.
The idea is a short pause before the familiar open, so you can notice the automatic action and consciously decide whether to continue.
My contribution covers the product hypothesis, PRD, user scenarios, and prototype development.
Status: Prototype / technical validation. This is early technical and product exploration; the app is not released and is not in the App Store.
Selected Experience
- Co-founding an AI travel discovery product; details in Featured Projects.
- Built a bench testing process from scratch in three months, making testing and bug fixing faster and more systematic.
- Set up a local Ollama-based LLM workflow for first-pass bug triage: summarizing reports, extracting reproduction steps, suggesting component ownership, and proposing initial hypotheses.
- Automated documentation generation in CI with Doxygen and an AI-assisted workflow to improve comment coverage and consistency.
- Introduced clearer task and invoice tracking, and recruited and onboarded two engineers to close staffing gaps.
- Developed OTA agents in C++ over Ethernet.
- Designed and implemented 10+ component tests in Python, strengthening coverage and catching regressions earlier.
- Resolved 25+ critical and high-priority bugs, improving overall system stability.
- Developed firmware for IoT devices and integrated voice skills into service functionality.
- Reduced the build pipeline from 1 hour 20 minutes to 45 minutes and tightened clang-tidy usage in the codebase.
- Automated task creation for failing overnight tests.
- Owned the component release cycle, estimates, and quality of code and hardware while coordinating with business stakeholders and other teams.
- Led day-to-day engineering work: design, C++ and Python development, reviews, and keeping delivery plans current.
- Built a native Node.js C++ addon driver for an IoT medical device and an Electron MVP for displaying device results (C++, Node.js, HTML, CSS).
- Set up and grew CI/CD from GitLab YAML to a TeamCity farm with six agents, and built AWS IoT/Lambda APIs with Docker and Python; also led sprint planning, stand-ups, demos, and retros.
- Developed software for automated production test stands and embedded systems on STM32 and Arduino, including a multithreaded C++ library for motors, sensors, and radio modules.
- Introduced Git versioning at the company and covered the full cycle from requirements and UML to documentation and delivery.
Other projects
Expertise
Engineering
- C++ (embedded, backend, desktop)
- Embedded / Linux, STM32, Arduino, ESP
- Architecture and component design
- Testing, CI/CD, automation
- Python, Node.js, networking protocols
Leadership
- Engineering team leadership
- Hiring and onboarding
- Sprint planning and delivery coordination
- Stakeholder communication and estimates
- Process design for testing and release
Product development
- Problem framing and MVP definition
- Prioritization and iteration planning
- PRDs and user scenarios
- Prototyping and feedback loops
- Shipping web products end to end
Writing & Travel
ВнеКарты
A Telegram channel with personal travel stories, city impressions, routes, and the small details of a trip.
The idea is not about ticking countries off a list, but about cities that stay with you.
The channel is in Russian.
Open Telegram
Selected Writing
Education
Nizhny Novgorod State Technical University · 2009–2013
Additional background
Certificates
Conferences
