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5M+

Students Served

BrainPOP Platform

3x

CTO Before

Age 35

30+

Engineers

Hired & Mentored

4

AI Providers

Buddzy — Live on iOS & Android

Summary

I make engineering teams faster, better, and harder to break. 16+ years shipping production systems. Three-time CTO that still ships code. Currently Technical Lead at BrainPOP (5M+ students), and solo architect of Buddzy, live on both app stores.

  • Led generative AI integration at BrainPOP — 5M+ students, 4 squads, 20+ microservices
  • Solo-built Buddzy from zero to production: 5-project monorepo, 4 AI providers, iOS & Android
  • 3x CTO by 35 · 30+ engineers hired & mentored · architecture authority across every squad I've joined

Experience

BrainPOP

Technical Lead

May 2023 – Present

Tel Aviv, Israel · Hybrid

EdTech platform serving 5M+ students. Architecture authority across all 4 squads; leading a squad of 6 engineers.

Led generative AI integration across the platform — drove adoption of AI tools into dev workflows, code reviews, and product features serving 5M+ students
Architecture authority across all 4 squads — owned system design, scalability reviews, and technical direction for 20+ microservices
Mentored 6 engineers — improved delivery velocity by structuring code reviews, pair programming, and reducing production regressions
Established engineering standards: code review practices, testing requirements, ADRs, runbooks — reduced MTTR on critical incidents by 40%
LaravelVue.jsDockerMySQLMongoDBMicroservicesAI/LLM

BuddzySide Project

Creator & Solo Architect

Jan 2025 – Present

Remote

Production AI-powered social mobile app — live on both App Store and Google Play. Solo-architected and shipped from zero, nights and weekends.

5-project TypeScript monorepo: Fastify/tRPC backend, React Native 0.81/Expo 54 mobile app (iOS + Android), AI pipelines, serverless media generation, Next.js landing page
Event-driven architecture with 22+ event types; tRPC for end-to-end type safety; PostgreSQL + Redis backing store
4 AI content pipelines — Gemini, SAM3, OpenAI, Replicate — powering dynamic game content and automated media generation
Server-side video rendering via Remotion + AWS Lambda; multi-provider infra across 3 cloud providers (AWS, GCP, Render)
Full game economy with 8+ game modes: Stars economy, Championships, Challenges, Lore Quizzes — i18n across 3 languages including RTL
Google PlayApp StoreWebsite
TypeScriptReact NativeFastifytRPCPostgreSQLRedisAWSGCPGeminiOpenAIRemotion

Or-Formation Services

Tech Expert & CTO

Nov 2021 – Apr 2023

Jerusalem, Israel

Joined as CTO of a 15-person company. Built full CRM from zero — scheduling, payments, automated invoicing, and client portal. Hired and trained 3 developers, owned all technical decisions and vendor relationships.

Annatel

Senior Software Engineer

Feb 2018 – Nov 2021

Jerusalem, Israel

Core engineer on a greenfield national MVNO serving 50K+ subscribers. Built and shipped a telecom service from zero. Designed subscriber management and SIM provisioning systems, led monolith-to-microservices migration, redesigned the billing application, and integrated with national telecom infrastructure (number portability, carrier APIs).

Audeside LTD

Senior Software Engineer

Feb 2016 – Feb 2018

Jerusalem, Israel

Modernized legacy PHP CRM; introduced CI/CD; built two-way communication system and Angular customer portal.

Earlier Career

Clappyx — Tech Lead & Mobile DeveloperDec 2014 – Feb 2016
SweetInn — Chief Technology OfficerMay 2014 – Dec 2014
Gagglon — CIO & Lead DeveloperApr 2013 – May 2014
Upsider — Full Stack DeveloperApr 2010 – Apr 2013

Open Source

github.com/JerryBels — Production infrastructure & community contributions

lambda-layer-openai

AWS Lambda layer for OpenAI SDK — production dependency in Buddzy's AI pipelines

lambda-layer-google-genai

AWS Lambda layer for @google/genai — powers Gemini integration in Buddzy

lambda-layer-replicate

AWS Lambda layer for Replicate SDK — image generation infrastructure

lambda-layer-sharp

AWS Lambda layer for Sharp — server-side image processing pipeline

Community Contributions

gmail.js— New feature: undo_send event detection + popup compose handlingmerged
laravel/scout— Bug fix: missing function after API changemerged
ex_phone_number (Elixir)— Updated XML phone data to latest versionmerged
laravel-ovh-sms— Laravel 9 & 10 compatibility fixesmerged
react-native-radio-buttons-group— Added focus/blur for Android TV support