Summary
Overview
Work history
Education
Skills
Frontend Development
DevOps & Cloud
Data & Observability
Architecture & Patterns
Testing & QA
Leadership & Achievements
Ways of Working
Certification
Languages
Timeline
Generic

JANJA KOVACEVIC

London,UK

Summary

Senior Software Engineer with 5+ years of experience in financial services and fintech, specialising in building scalable payments platforms and modernising complex systems. Over the past five years, I have grown from a fast-moving engineer in small, empowered team into a senior role, leading design and delivery of products that underpin Tier-1 banks and drive company-critical revenue.

My strength lies not just in technical expertise, but in bridging technology, product, and business context - understanding bigger picture, identifying problems across it, and shaping solutions that balance immediate impact with long-term sustainability. A former professional athlete, I bring resilience, focus, and drive to perform at the highest level to every team I join.

Overview

2026
2026
years of professional experience
1
1
Certification

Work history

Senior Software Engineer

Pollinate International Limited
London
01.2021 - 08.2025
  • Architected and led delivery of a modular payments onboarding platform, Pollinate's top strategic priority projected to unlock 40% of company revenue in the next 3 years. Stepped into end-to-end ownership in the absence of architects, coordinating across 5 teams to align business and technical design.
  • Designed an abstracted orchestration layer to eliminate developer intervention for client configuration updates, significantly cutting maintenance overhead and enabling sustainable multi-client support.
  • Delivered major business impact: halved cost of maintenance, doubled scaling speed, achieved 3× faster client onboarding, and reduced manual onboarding from hours to a fully automated 5-minute digital journey. Recognised as a go-to technical leader.
  • Redesigned and implemented the Pollinate Portal, the company's flagship product driving ~50% of revenue. Rationalised a legacy of ~60 microservices into a single BFF with adaptor layer, reducing maintenance effort by 60% while enabling multi-client adoption.
  • Cut delivery timelines from months to days (e.g. visual design changes), allowing Pollinate to ship features and customisations rapidly.
  • Worked hands-on across front-end, back-end, and DevOps, becoming the key engineering reference point for Portal-related work.

Full Stack Developer Consultant

Sparta Global (client: Pollinate International)
London, UK
09.2020 - 07.2022
  • Delivered merchant-facing value-added products (loyalty, offers, order-ahead) for multiple Tier-1 banks, enabling increased customer spend, stronger merchant retention, and higher satisfaction.
  • Played a key role in decoupling front-end delivery from the core portal, creating an independent microfrontend and pipeline that enabled autonomous deployments while maintaining seamless integration.
  • Helped establish a new company benchmark for engineering speed and quality, with the team recognised as the fastest and most effective in the business.
  • Maintained up-to-date documentation, aiding future development efforts.

Software Engineering Intern

NCR Corporation
  • Developed Robotic Process Automation scripts for in-house and client-facing applications.

Software Engineering Intern

National Bank of Serbia
  • Designed and built a file conversion program adopted for daily use and presented to senior management.

Education

BSc - Computer Science, Mathematical Computing, Information Technology

University of Massachusetts Amherst
Amherst, MA

Skills

  • Java, Spring Boot, WebFlux
  • SQL, JPA, Hibernate
  • REST APIs
  • Kafka

Frontend Development

  • Angular, TypeScript, Nx, SCSS

DevOps & Cloud

  • Azure, ArgoCD, Docker, Kubernetes, Terraform
  • CI/CD (Azure DevOps)

Data & Observability

  • SQL, Cosmos DB, Redis
  • ElasticSearch, Kibana

Architecture & Patterns

  • Microservices architecture
  • Backend-for-Frontend (BFF) pattern with client adaptor layer
  • Module Federation

Testing & QA

  • Cypress, Playwright
  • JUnit, Spock, Wiremock, Cucumber

Leadership & Achievements

  • Former professional tennis player, ranked as high as #1211 WTA
  • First player in University history to qualify for the All-American Championships; awarded Atlantic 10 Most Outstanding Rookie Performer.
  • Member of the Student Athlete Advisory Committee, leading community initiatives and earning the ITA Community Service Award (Northeast).
  • Experience competing internationally instilled resilience, discipline, and ability to perform under pressure - strengths carried into professional engineering career.

Ways of Working

  • Agile/Scrum
  • Cross-functional collaboration with product and business teams

Certification

Microsoft Azure Fundamentals

Languages

English
Fluent
Serbian / Bosnian / Croatian
Native

Timeline

Senior Software Engineer

Pollinate International Limited
01.2021 - 08.2025

Full Stack Developer Consultant

Sparta Global (client: Pollinate International)
09.2020 - 07.2022

Software Engineering Intern

NCR Corporation

Software Engineering Intern

National Bank of Serbia

BSc - Computer Science, Mathematical Computing, Information Technology

University of Massachusetts Amherst

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JANJA KOVACEVIC