# Ivan K. > Engineering Manager · Distributed Systems & AI/ML Platforms · Led 10-engineer teams shipping to 800M+ users · LinkedIn alum · LLM Evaluation & AI Safety (Meta) Location: Fremont, California, United States Profile: https://flows.cv/ivank I build engineering teams that ship at scale — and keep shipping reliably. For 10 years at LinkedIn, my team's infrastructure quietly powered the localization experience for 800M+ users across 15+ markets. We ran at 99.8% uptime, cut QA overhead by 40%, slashed defect rates by 35%, and never blew a $3M annual budget. None of that happened by accident — it happened through deliberate system design, automation-first thinking, and engineers who were set up to do their best work. Most recently at Meta, I moved closer to the frontier: red-teaming LLMs, designing adversarial evaluation frameworks, and identifying model vulnerabilities before they reached production. I now combine deep platform engineering instincts with hands-on AI safety and LLM evaluation experience — a combination that's increasingly rare and increasingly needed. What I bring to an engineering team: ▸ Distributed systems & microservices architecture at massive scale ▸ AI/ML platform development and LLM evaluation pipelines ▸ Localization/internationalization infrastructure (i18n, l10n, TMS) ▸ CI/CD optimization, test automation, and quality engineering ▸ Cross-functional leadership across Product, Design, and Data Science ▸ Talent development — 3 ICs grown to Staff/Senior under my management I'm actively exploring Engineering Manager roles at companies building AI-powered platforms, developer infrastructure, or global-scale products. Open to: Senior EM · Staff EM · Director of Engineering · Platform/AI Infra leadership 📍 Fremont, CA · Open to hybrid/remote ## Work Experience ### AI / LLM Evaluation Specialist @ Rose International - Contract at Meta Jan 2025 – Jan 2026 | Fremont, CA Hardened production LLM safety across sensitive policy domains at one of the world's largest AI deployments. ▸ Designed red-teaming and adversarial evaluation frameworks that surfaced model failure modes before deployment — directly improving trust, accuracy, and policy compliance. ▸ Built structured evaluation rubrics aligned to Meta's policy taxonomy; feedback was incorporated into model improvement cycles. ▸ Iterated on prompt-based test suites to reduce false negatives in high-risk content classification, cross-validating against ground-truth benchmarks. ### Software Engineering Manager @ LinkedIn Jan 2017 – Jan 2025 | Mountain View, California Led a 10-engineer team building the microservices-based localization infrastructure that powered LinkedIn's 800M+ user experience across 15+ global markets. ▸ Sustained 99.8% uptime on all platform services while scaling to support continuous global product launches. ▸ Cut QA cycle time 40% and defect escape rate 35% by re-architecting the translation QA pipeline with automated validation layers and ML-assisted quality scoring. ▸ Delivered 15+ market expansions on schedule by redesigning content ingestion APIs and distributed processing pipelines — reducing per-locale launch overhead ~60%. ▸ Managed $3M annual budget with zero overruns across 6 years; reallocated 20% of vendor spend to internal tooling that eliminated two external dependencies. ▸ Grew 3 ICs to Staff/Senior through structured roadmap ownership and cross-functional sponsorship. ### Senior SW Engineer @ LinkedIn Jan 2016 – Jan 2017 | Sunnyvale, CA Designed and built the automation infrastructure and APIs that became the foundation for LinkedIn's global localization platform. ▸ Saved thousands of engineering hours annually by building end-to-end automation pipelines that eliminated manual translation handoffs across 15+ markets. ▸ Reduced i18n defect rate 40% by authoring static analysis tools that caught locale-specific encoding and formatting bugs at CI time. ▸ Designed the REST/event-driven interfaces that downstream teams still rely on to submit, track, and retrieve localized content at scale. ### Senior Localization Test Engineer @ LinkedIn Jan 2016 – Jan 2016 | Mountain View - Conducted manual and automated testing on software applications to ensure functionality and reliability. - Analyzed defects to determine corrective action plans and created detailed quality assurance reports. - Reviewed test cases and tracked bugs using bug tracking systems like JIRA. ### Localization QA Engineer @ LinkedIn Jan 2014 – Jan 2016 | Mountain View, CA - Submitted localization bugs and worked on engineering tasks using JIRA - Developed Selenium based functional test automation scripts in Ruby - Troubleshot automation scripts and participated in Scrum team meetings ### Lead SQA Engineer @ HP Jan 2006 – Jan 2014 | Sunnyvale, CA Team & Technical Leadership - Led a QA team responsible for end-to-end testing of core HP software products including Recovery Manager, Support Assistant, BIOS tools, and diagnostics utilities. - Oversaw hiring, onboarding, and mentoring of new QA engineers; implemented structured training on bug submission and QA best practices. Automation & Tools - Built Selenium and QTP-based automated test suites for functional and regression testing, reducing manual QA time by 50%. - Developed internal tools using C# and Java to automate repetitive test flows, cutting daily validation effort by 30%. Cross-Platform Testing - Designed and executed test plans for multiple operating systems (Windows Vista through Windows 8.1), ensuring compatibility and performance across platforms. - Created full Functional Validation Scripts (FVS) to standardize validation across global QA teams. Localization QA - Led localization testing for Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish versions of HP software and websites, ensuring linguistic and functional accuracy across international markets. Agile Collaboration & Quality Delivery - Worked closely with cross-functional Agile teams to coordinate software development, test planning, and release execution. - Conducted black-box and white-box testing, submitted application/system-level test requests, and resolved cross-regional bugs in collaboration with offshore teams. ### Team Lead @ HP Jan 2005 – Jan 2006 | Cupertino, CA Led testing of graphics drivers and media components (e.g., Cyberlink DVD Player); performed regression and localization testing for Nordic markets. ### Web Developer @ Webgeyser Jan 2004 – Jan 2005 | Oakland, CA Built and maintained company and client websites; localized content for Swedish, Norwegian, Russian, and Bulgarian markets. ### Senior Human Resources Coordinator @ TRANSIMPEX JSC - Bulgaria Jan 1998 – Jan 2000 | Varna, Bulgaria Managed recruiting operations, interview coordination, and talent outreach across multiple company initiatives. ## Education ### MA in Scandinavian Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski ### CIS De Anza College ### Master of Science (MS) in Computer Information Systems Technical University of Sofia ### Norwegian Language and Literature University of Oslo ## Contact & Social - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/ivan-k-05110937 --- Source: https://flows.cv/ivank JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/ivank/resume.json Last updated: 2026-04-17