Alina Boghiu - CV

Professional Summary

Engineering leader with 12+ years in software development, including 6+ years in senior leadership
Proven delivery of large-scale products and platforms serving millions of users, including the Guardian news app, Guardian website, and core internal systems at the Guardian, the BBC, and Goldman Sachs.
Trusted partner to product, design, data, and executive stakeholders, known for clear communication, strong technical judgment, and effective tradeoff-making between short-term delivery and long-term system health.
Currently leading 27 engineers across 5 cross-functional teams in the apps stream, spanning product, platform, and server side domains.
Experienced people leader with direct line management of 9 engineers across all levels, including senior, staff, and tech leads, with accountability for hiring, progression and performance, with a focus on creating inclusive, supportive teams.

Backend systems: Scala, Java, AWS, distributed systems, APIs
Frontend & mobile: React, TypeScript, Swift, Kotlin
Data & messaging: MongoDB, DynamoDB, Redis, BigQuery, complex domain modelling, Kinesis
Platform concerns: performance, reliability, scalable architectures, security, incident response, developer experience

The Guardian August 2021 - now

Overall responsibility for the Guardian apps remit, spanning 5 teams
Led the May 2025 news app relaunch, delivering multiple major features, which won us the News App of the Year at the Future of Media Awards and drove a +20% YoY increase in daily active users, reaching ~1M and a +13% growth in recurring digital supporters, reaching ~1.3M
Led delivery of multiple LLM-powered features in production, including generative AI–driven audio experiences (e.g. "Listen to this article") within the Guardian app
Created and implemented the Engineering Performance Framework, shaping expectations, progression, and promotion across engineering
Accountability for hiring within the apps stream
Leadership of the 24/7 support and incident response programme
Established and led an Engineering Manager mentoring scheme, supporting leadership development and succession planning

Engineering manager for 2 teams, line managing 11 developers
Led the Guardian website team through a major migration from Scala/Twirl to React/TypeScript, modernising the frontend architecture
Delivered a comprehensive design system still in active use, alongside sustained improvements across all Core Web Vitals
Led the modernisation and rationalisation of editorial tooling, improving reliability and maintainability of newsroom systems
Directed the recovery and stabilisation of critical backend services following the December 2022 cyber attack against the Guardian

Engineering manager for 2 teams, line managing 5 developers
Led delivery of a new email rendering system for newsletters, increasing readership by 40% with direct revenue impact
Partnered closely with editorial leadership to deliver experimental journalism features, supporting innovation in newsroom workflows

BBC July 2015 - July 2021

Line management responsibility for 9 engineers
Led delivery of Optimo, a new web based core internal authoring platform for the BBC now used for all news publishing

Designed and delivered Passports, an internal metadata system enabling audience targeting across BBC content
Built and maintained Scala-based microservices and event streams using Kinesis, with MongoDB and Redis for data storage
Introduced observability across backend systems, implementing logging, monitoring, and alerting using the ELK stack
Founded and led a monitoring and alerting guild, improving operational practices across teams

Developed backend APIs for the BBC's internal liveblog publishing platform, using Scala with MongoDB and Redis
Automated microservice creation, integrating the tool with GitHub and AWS and reducing time to production from days to minutes

Goldman Sachs August 2013 - June 2015

Contributed to the development of an internal manual trade adjustment system used daily by traders in a regulated environment
Built and maintained Java systems with a strong emphasis on reliability, correctness, and compliance with regulatory requirements
Integrated closely with the firm's core risk management platform (SecDB), working within strict testing and change-control processes

BEng Computing / Imperial College London October 2010 - May 2013

Samaritans February 2024 - now

Code Your Future May 2023 - August 2023