Paul Bădărău
Product Engineering Lead. Product leadership with the engineering depth to see it through.
Summary
I lead digital products and follow each decision down to the systems that carry it out. I have more than 12 years in software. For the last eight I have worked mainly with UK charities and social-impact organisations, on services for foster carers and children, parents, people living with cancer, teachers and schools.
I work alongside the people who own and run a service, from planning and design to delivery and hands-on build. I have led the move of a live platform, with terabytes of data and tens of thousands of sensitive records, while people kept using it.
Open to product manager and product engineering lead roles, and to consulting and contract work.
Experience
- 2019 to now
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Product Engineering Lead, Super Being Labs
I lead the product and technical development of digital services for UK charities, nonprofits and social-impact organisations: fostering, family support, cancer support and education.
I work with product owners, organisational leaders, delivery teams and external partners, from planning and service design through delivery and hands-on build. Much of the work is modernising services that people rely on every day, without stopping them.
- Fostering platform: Fostering services across England and Wales, in English and Welsh. Main developer; led the technical development.
- Family support service for a major UK children’s charity: Thousands of parents and carers each year. Helped build and maintain it.
- Property inspection platform and migration: 60,000+ inspections and over 4 TB of reports and photos. Led the engineering.
- Computing education platform: 708 schools, 30,444 young people and 860 teachers in 2024/25. Main developer on the platform; led the build of the new one.
- Breast cancer support app: 8,500+ users within a year of launch. Worked on the app, backend and content system until it closed.
- 2017 to 2018
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Founding product engineer, Tailwise
A London pet-tech startup that matched people looking for a dog with verified, responsible breeders, to cut off demand for puppy farms. I joined at the start and turned the idea into a launched product in six months. That product helped the company raise £200,000 from investors.
Working directly with the founders, I shaped the first version, turned their assumptions into a focused plan, and led development through to launch, keeping it simple enough for a small team to test the market quickly.
- 2014 to 2017
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Full-stack and independent developer
Web applications built end to end in JavaScript, then custom software and automation in Python and Ruby.
- Alongside
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Founder, PostDeploy
Everything after you ship: uptime monitoring, error tracking, privacy-first analytics, status pages and changelogs for small teams, in one product.
Capabilities
- Product
- Problem framing and product direction · Prioritisation and roadmaps · Service design across users, staff and partners · Stakeholder work with leaders, product owners and funders · Reporting that funders can check
- Delivery
- Delivery leadership and risk management · Legacy platform migration with staged transfer and verification · Continuity for live users and integrations · Responsible handling of sensitive data and safeguarding flows
- Engineering
- Ruby on Rails and Hotwire · Elixir and Phoenix · React, React Native and native iOS with SwiftUI · Node · PostgreSQL and SQLite · Twilio Flex, Studio and TaskRouter
- Operations
- Linux administration · Cloudflare Workers, D1, Queues and R2 · Monitoring and incident response · Testing and CI
Own apps
- SkyCheck
- Shows drone pilots in Romania where they can fly, from live official airspace data. iOS.
- Food & Fit
- Protein and fibre tracking for women with PCOS, built with input from my wife, who is a doctor. iOS.
Get in touch
Email is the fastest way to reach me. I reply within two working days.
Start a conversationI feed the stray cats around my neighbourhood most evenings. It is the only part of my day with a fixed schedule.