
Alexander Belov
Verified Expert in Engineering
Software Developer
Ko Samui Surat Thani, Thailand
Toptal member since February 10, 2017
Alexander is a senior back-end engineer and technical lead with 20+ years of experience building robust, scalable systems from scratch. He has deep expertise in PHP, Drupal, Laravel, .NET, Docker, CI/CD, and designing high-performance APIs. He's skilled in architecture, integrations, and production deployment. He's passionate about automation, AI-driven workflows, and optimizing processes for business impact. Alexander has experience collaborating with international teams.
Portfolio
Experience
- jQuery - 15 years
- Drupal 7 - 11 years
- PhpStorm - 8 years
- Agile - 6 years
- Docker - 5 years
- Debian - 5 years
- Drupal 9 - 3 years
- PostCSS - 2 years
Preferred Environment
PhpStorm, Ubuntu, Git, Drupal, PHP, jQuery, HTML, CSS, Drupal 10, Back-end
The most amazing...
...achievement was developing Roche Accu-Chek Academy’s multi-mode e-learning platform, which serves over 20 countries and won the FOX Award Gold 2018.
Work Experience
Senior Developer | Project Manager
T-Journey
- Planned and developed a case study system required by the stringent rules of the bodywork school. It connects teachers, students, and their models in a transparent system, allowing the learning process to run smoothly.
- Set up a Docker environment for all three setups: local development, staging, and production.
- Developed a nice history of actions on the website: who did what, when, and what results they brought. This provides total transparency and overview for the developers, teachers, and, to some degree, students, who are also allowed to see part of it.
Lead Drupal Developer
Buzzwoo Asia
- Handled the full project cycle, including estimation, requirement specs, communication with the client, development, task delegation, and testing.
- Employed behavior-driven design using the Behat framework.
- Managed other employees' task delegations. Sometimes, I had to seek external freelancers to get some of the job done.
Product Owner | Project Manager | Lead Developer
Self-employed
- Developed a banking system for 300+ active community members with their currency, allowing access from their own developed Android and iOS apps and web UI.
- Proved to the company that Drupal 9 solutions are very fast, reliable, and do not demand system resources. They also allow a high level of customization and fast request-solution time.
- Developed a built-in restaurant shop service that works from the app. It is integrated with restaurant processes and meal tracking from order creation through cooking till the order is finished.
- Relieved many people from lots of monotonous, unnecessary labor, allowing the software solutions to do what they are best at.
- Developed an effective and secure API for mobile apps to connect and serve the clients in an even more user-friendly way.
Drupal Developer
Brick Underground LLC
- Developed features according to the company's vision, added them to the website, and coordinated with the design and UX team.
- Reflected on my vision of the website that I continued to work with from previous developers and suggested changes that simplified and made the website more user-friendly, faster, and more organized.
- Researched and worked on an integration with Mailchimp beyond the standard Drupal solution that would allow working with mailing lists and the archive purely from the Drupal site.
- Accomplished other tasks not directly related to Drupal but still vital for the website—setting up DMARC and GA4, researching BigQuery, and connecting with GA4. Integrated and organized the workflow using Jira.
- Organized processes effectively to unfold smoothly, as the project was in the US, and I worked remotely with a 12-hour time zone difference.
Drupal Developer
DLabs
- Worked in an Agile environment on the Drupal platform.
- Developed an exceptionally big project for a Slovenian oil and gas company called Petrol.
- Made interactive calculations and various map integrations.
- Built a solution for one of the leading insurance companies, which included integration of many different technologies.
- Created a multi-domain site that reused common tables, based on PostgreSQL.
Back-end SOAP .NET Services Business Logic Developer
Dhimahi d.o.o.
- Developed high-performance back-end services for the ticket distribution layer for one of the busiest ticket sale networks, Eventim (in many countries).
- Developed web services for the integration of outlets like gas stations, where people could buy tickets together with the fuel.
- Developed JMeter load tests, which resulted in over 200 bookings per minute (one booking consisted of ticket search, selection of the seat, adding to a cart, checking out, entering credit card info, checking the confirmations + collecting the metrics).
Owner, PM, and Developer
ALBETECH
- Found local clients.
- Analyzed requirements.
- Wrote documentation.
- Implemented some work and handled subcontracting of other work.
- Provided full customer support.
- Handled the full project cycle for both large- and micro-scale projects.
- Integrated and synced with data sources that included over 50k entities for the Slovenian Ethnographic Museum.
Back-end Developer
Comtrade (former Hermes SoftLab)
- Developed HP Data Protector (Omniback) remote backup agent installation for all chosen computers in the network.
- Developed Windows Installer package for HP Data Protector.
- Developed *nix installation script for backup agent for systems that did not support remote installation.
- Took the responsibility of performing knowledge transfer of part of the product (HP Data Protector) from Europe to HP India (Bangalore) 2002.
Experience
Roche Academy E-learning Solution
Learn more: https://www.cyperfection.de/en/projects/academy
The project was discontinued after 10 years of work.
Petrol d.d.
https://www.petrol.siDobrawPay: Banking Solution with Custom Currency
This project proved Drupal 9/10’s capability as a reliable, fast, and resource-efficient solution for highly customized, agile fintech platforms. Drupal empowered rapid request-response cycles and flexible integrations, while ensuring high security and stability. The system included secure APIs and real-time order synchronization, demonstrating Drupal’s strengths in building complex, scalable financial and transactional applications.
This is a private project intended exclusively for a closed membership group and is therefore not publicly accessible.
Bodywork School Case Study System
TILIA
With time, it has gained many integrations with other software developed by another team, mainly Symfony 2 and jQuery-based.
Some of the project features:
• More than 200 office entities are shown on the map, with the ability to filter among them.
• Interactive calculations of products and preparation of downloadable contracts.
The product has since been rebranded as SAVA and moved to another domain.
HP Data Protector
https://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c00664475.pdfI created Windows Installer packages for the management console using new installer technology to simplify deployment. For Unix systems, I developed a unified installation shell script supporting 10+ Unix flavors (HP-UX, Solaris, AIX, Linux), addressing environments where remote deployment was not feasible.
In 2002, I led a knowledge transfer and conducted detailed on-site technical training over three weeks at HP India (Bangalore), ensuring smooth transition and operational continuity.
This project highlights deep technical expertise, cross-platform engineering, and international collaboration, resulting in enhanced reliability and efficiency of enterprise-scale backup solutions.
Education
Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science
Faculty of Computer and Informatics - Ljubljana, Slovenia
Skills
Libraries/APIs
jQuery, REST APIs
Tools
Git, Docker Compose, PhpStorm, NGINX, Traefik, Gulp, PostCSS, Apache, Ansible, Trello, Google Analytics, Subversion (SVN), Windows Installer, Behat
Languages
PHP, JavaScript, HTML, CSS, HTML5, Sass, Less, AMPscript, Assembler x86, Assembler, C, C++, C#.NET, C#, Web Services Description Language (WSDL), Bash
Platforms
Drupal, Drupal 8, Drupal 7, Drupal 9, Docker, Drupal 10, LAMP, Debian, Ubuntu, Linux, Acquia, Acquia Cloud, Drupal 6, Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Storage
MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, Databases, IBM Db2
Frameworks
Twig, Laravel, Drupal Commerce, Django REST Framework, .NET, NHibernate
Paradigms
DevOps, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Behavior-driven Development (BDD), Agile
Other
Content Management Systems (CMS), Back-end, APIs, Full-stack, Single Sign-on (SSO), Communication, Front-end, Migration, Upgrades, Integration, Software Architecture, Technical Leadership, Database Optimization, Performance Optimization, Caching, Drupal Theming, Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), SOAP, Ajax, OOP Designs, PHP Web Services, Web Services, Headless Software, Symphony, Real Estate, Chatbots, Headless CMS, Headless UI, CI/CD Pipelines, WCAG 2, Computer, Algorithms, Architecture, Economics, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Scripting, Installation, Shell Scripting
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