Ilian Z.

I am an engineering leader and entrepreneur with a 14-year career that includes founding three startups where I served as CTO (one successful exit) and driving development of products with millions of users. I currently serve as Senior Engineering Manager for a big tech company. In 2015 I founded Earny, a consumer advocate service that helps shoppers maximize their spending through automatic price protection (acquired in March 2021). I founded Earny to help users make intelligent shopping decisions by leveraging proprietary price-tracking technology and pricing trends to get automatic refunds on price drops, add items to watchlist, and earn cashback. The company raised $14M in funding, received national press coverage (Good Morning America, CNN, Forbes, WSJ, HuffPo, etc.), was named a "Top 50 Startup to Watch" by Business Insider, and the iOS app trended for several weeks as a Top 10 in the finance category.

My experience includes building and leading high-performing software engineering teams, setting technical vision, designing complex systems and architecture, and guiding teams in execution. In addition to my experience, I earned a Master's degree in Computer Science and Cybersecurity from a top-notch French Engineering school.