Engineering Manager at Opply
The boring premise Let’s get the obvious part out of the way: at Opply, one engineer owns both ends of a feature. Backend, frontend, migration, types, tests, Storybook, the deploy. The “FE specialist” / “BE specialist” split belongs to a previous era — it made sense when shipping a serializer was
For a long time, there has been a clear gap between engineering and the business. Product defines → Engineering delivers Context gets translated into tickets → tickets into code This model made sense when execution was expensive. Writing software took time, coordination, and careful planning. The separation between thinking and building was,
For most of my career as a software engineer, I’ve tried to follow the practices that make engineering sustainable: writing tests, keeping changes small, reviewing carefully, documenting intent. Recently, while reflecting on how my way of writing code has changed with the introduction of AI coding tools, I realised
Recently, I have been reflecting on how the idea of prototyping is often interpreted in software. Too frequently, it is treated as an MVP: an intentionally imperfect product that resembles the real thing, but is never meant to truly be it. Something built quickly, used briefly, and ultimately thrown away.
In fast-moving startups, engineering happens under pressure: ambitious roadmaps, evolving priorities, limited resources, and a constant need to deliver value quickly. Under these conditions, one mindset consistently outperforms all others: Pragmatism. At Opply, pragmatic engineering is not about cutting corners or lowering standards. It’s about focusing relentlessly on outcomes,
At Opply, we’ve always had great engineers. Talented, fast, committed. But when I joined, something was missing. Not skill, not dedication, but ownership. We were brilliant executors. Hand us a ticket, and we would deliver. Hand us a bug, and we would fix it. Features got built, tickets got
Opply is entering an important new phase, one where our technology, our pace of innovation, and our team's work deserve to be seen. This blog is the first step in asserting our readiness for a public-facing tech presence and sharing the story behind what we are building. Why