DZone Research Guides
Miami, FL · Building at Sphere
Slaven
Slaven
Slugic builds.
Engineering leader and hands-on builder. Twenty years shipping software at Microsoft, Disney, Expedia and Smartsheet — now leading engineering in fintech, building AI-native products on the side, and investing in real estate and early-stage startups.
Based in
Miami, Florida
Education
B.S. Computer Science, WWU
Experience
20 years in software
Also
Real estate & angel investor
01 — Background
From the Balkans to the Pacific Northwest, to Miami.
The beginning
Ex-Yugoslavia
Born and raised in the former Yugoslavia, where the story starts.
YU
1998 → 2025
Seattle
Immigrated to the USA in 1998 and spent most of my life in Seattle. Earned a B.S. in Computer Science from Western Washington University, then built a career at Microsoft, Expedia and Smartsheet.
SEA
Now
Miami
Recently moved to Miami. Leading engineering in stablecoin and payments infrastructure, and shipping my own products at night.
MIA
02 — Experience
Where I've worked and what I built there.
Engineering
Sphere Labs · Miami · Remote
Engineering at a stablecoin payments company, building the rails that move money across borders.
2026 — Now
Engineering Manager
zerohash · Miami
Led engineering at a crypto and stablecoin infrastructure platform powering embedded digital-asset products for fintechs.
2025 — 20267 mos
Senior Engineering Manager
Mosaic.tech · Cloud Infrastructure & Automation · Remote
Managed SDETs, SDEs and SREs owning product quality end to end: infrastructure as code, CI/CD, security, frequent deploys and automated testing. Drove SOC 2 compliance company-wide and led an offshore engineering team.
IaCCI/CDSOC 2SRE
2022 — 20252 yrs 11 mos
Sr. Engineering Manager · Engineering Manager · Principal SDET
Smartsheet · Seattle / Bellevue
Nearly eight years, from Principal SDET to Sr. EM. Built the team from zero to six, then the test automation framework the whole company relied on — no manual testing required. Built the infra and tooling that moved Smartsheet from monthly to fully automated weekly releases.
AWS EKS/ECSTerraformKubernetesJavaPython
2014 — 20227 yrs 11 mos
Sr. Software Engineer, Automation
Expedia, Inc. · Bellevue
Architected and built the automation framework, with Solr search, Jenkins/TeamCity continuous delivery and Chef deployments.
C#JavaScalaSelenium
2011 — 20142 yrs 7 mos
Senior Software Engineer in Test
The Walt Disney Company
Built internal testing tools and frameworks, and UI components in Flex/Flash for Disney's web properties, improving quality, scale and performance.
Adobe FlexFlashJava
2009 — 20111 yr 8 mos
Software Development Engineer II
Microsoft · Office · Redmond
Shipped features for Excel and Word and built internal tools that streamlined team workflows.
C#Office
2006 — 20093 yrs
03 — Projects
Things I've built on my own.
Testera
Agentic QAAgentic test management. Testera discovers tests, heals failures, files tickets and opens draft PRs — humans always approve the merge. Free core QA plus MCP, and DevHunt's #1 Tool of the Week.
testera.io →
Docklio
AI archiveAn AI document archive. Connect Gmail, Drive, Notion, Smartsheet or any MCP server, name an archive, and Docklio finds, labels and indexes every related document, then builds a briefing with deadlines, parties and key amounts. Nothing is copied or moved.
docklio.co →
amem
Local agent memoryPersonal memory for coding agents. Gives Claude Code, Cursor and other agents a private, searchable memory of your repos, plus skills, tasks and a desktop app, so each session starts oriented instead of cold. Free, and facts never leave ~/.amem. One command: npx @iamem/amem setup.
getamem.com →
The Whole Day
News that endsOne page of science going right. Every story is a single sourced paragraph, the whole edition reads in about ten minutes, and there's a real finish line — no infinite scroll. Published daily in thirteen languages.
thewhole.day →
Pulse
Retro fitness trackerA retro fitness tracker for iPhone, wrapped in 80s neon and synth beats. Count calories and log workouts by talking, typing or snapping a photo, and the Coach handles macros and plans. Every log earns XP toward 15 Street Crew ranks, with daily quests, unlockable music and squad challenges against friends. In public beta on TestFlight.
pulseretro.fit →
04 — Investing
Investor in property and people.
Real estate
Real estate investor
An active portfolio across the property lifecycle, from buying off-plan to renovating and holding for income.
Pre-constructionoff-plan & new builds
Rentalslong & short term
Fix & flipvalue-add renovation
And moreacross markets
RE
Angel investing
Angel investor
Backing founders early across proptech, legal tech, conversational AI and beyond.
JurnyAI hospitality
UpCounselLegal marketplace
SapientXConversational AI
TesseractPortfolio company
+ more companies
05 — Publications
Writing & ideas.
Book · Paperback · 2026
The Art of Artificial Intelligence
Creativity in the Age of Machines
A practical, no-hype guide to working with AI as a solo builder or creator. You don't have to master every skill yourself; you learn to direct the work.
Get it on AmazonDZone DevOps
Setting Up Automation for Webhooks Testing
06 — Digital card
Keep my card on your phone.
SS
Slaven Slugic
Engineering Leader · Builder · Investor
(786) 796-7801
slugics@gmail.com
linkedin.com/in/slavenslugic
github.com/sslugic
Miami, FLB.S. CS · WWU
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07 — Contact
Let's build something.
Always happy to talk engineering leadership, AI tooling, real estate and early-stage investing.