Interview with Veaceslav Gaidarji, CTO - Orangesoft

Veaceslav Gaidarji  

CTO, Orangesoft

Give us a quick overview of Orangesoft. When and how did you begin this journey, and what were your motives to be successful?

I joined Orangesoft in May 2023. At that time, I was mainly looking for a Senior Engineering Manager or Director of Engineering position. Orangesoft’s CTO position caught my eye as the responsibilities and job description overlapped with what I’ve been doing before. In my previous jobs, I reported directly to talented CTOs and closely collaborated with them, so I had the chance to learn a lot and had a professional role model to emulate. It means I was well prepared to take on this ambitious role, and I was also fully aware of the fact that I would have to learn a lot.  After talking with C-level executives at Orangesoft, I realized that this is exactly the team and culture I want to be part of, and we can achieve amazing results together.

What is your role in the management and development of Orangesoft?

I’m responsible for the technical leadership, working on short/mid/long term strategies, introducing best practices, and standardizing processes for the company. When necessary, I take part in the pre-sale process, helping the teams find the optimal solutions and meet the clients' expectations while keeping the bar high. The list of responsibilities and day-to-day tasks is long and versatile. Typically, CTOs help marketing teams, work with HR, participate in hiring activities, plan and monitor the budget and a lot more.

Tell us about your biggest achievement in the industry.

Since the company's inception in 2011, we have delivered more than 300 projects, including small and big ones. It would be hard to pick just one, so I consider dozens of happy clients and solved challenges to be the biggest achievement.

How do you schedule the development phases of the app design and development projects to promise the timeline to your clients?

Orangesoft has very solid development processes, which are being reviewed and fine-tuned during and after each project development. Our business analysis team has exceptional skills in crafting detailed requirements and clarifying any major questions or ambiguities that teams may have when they receive client requirements. The engineering team and technical Heads of departments spend much time thoroughly analyzing the requirements and selecting the tools to achieve the project goal. They also prepare high-level architecture diagrams to make sure nothing is missed. A lot of other teams, including dedicated designers, project managers, QA, and others, participate in the project to make sure we keep the quality bar high and deliver on the promised timelines.

Which framework, programming or scripting languages do you prefer for web development? How do you convince your clients for the same?

Our main tech stack for web development consists of Javascript/Typescript, React.js, Next.js, HTML5/CSS/SASS; PostgreSQL/MongoDB/MySQL/Redis for DBs; Express.js, Node.js, NestJS for backend. We believe it’s the best combination with many advantages, such as quick development time, mature ecosystem and community, high performance, and scalability. It’s easy to convince clients when you have a strong portfolio of running in-production applications. And it would be much harder to convince clients to use some new/bleeding edge technologies, which is not the case for our stack.

 How do you scheme your pricing model? How do you fix your budget?

We prefer the time and material pricing model as it gives enough flexibility during the development stage. To provide the most accurate estimation, we always start with the discovery phase. Our business analysts and technical team dive deep into the client's industry and project requirements to mitigate both technical and business risks. Based on the project complexity and timelines, we assign the most suitable developers to the project. Therefore, this stage helps us to come up with a viable solution within the client's budget. We provide a detailed estimation describing each feature and detailing costs for quality assurance, project management, third-party solutions expanses, and further support.

How helpful are the app design and development made by Orangesoft for your clients in enhancing their business?

As we always conduct a thorough business analysis, our team understands the target audience and the real problem that the client wants to solve. It helps our team create top-notch UX along with features that bring value to the users.

Thanks to this approach, our company has helped many businesses turn their projects into success stories.

For example, one of our clients was CoachNow, which is a go-to digital training and communication platform for coaches and trainers. It started as a golf-oriented solution, and within a few years, it grew to include 60+ sports across 140 countries. The project attracted more than $2 million.

What, according to you, are the best practices to attain client satisfaction? 

Usually, it’s not enough to just deliver the features discussed initially. When working with clients, we go the extra mile to figure out what can be done differently to bring more user satisfaction and attract more users. We try to be partners with our clients, be in a constant communication loop with them and avoid working in isolation when possible.

How do you update your business system to keep pace with technological advancements?

We have R&D processes and an internal team in place. This allows us to experiment with new technologies, build prototypes, and evaluate where these technologies can do a better job than the traditional technologies we currently have.

R&D is not the only way for us to keep up with the industry dynamics, and here is what else we do:
●  As we are focused on three domains – Fintech, Healthcare, and IoT – we are constantly analyzing the flagship products on the market for new approaches and features, monitoring emerging technologies and best practices, and communicating with the industries' experts.
●    We regularly review the feedback from the sales team to stay up to date with the market's demand.
●    We also track our projects' duration, trying to find ways to decrease the development time for the most popular features.

What are your thoughts about AR, VR and the Internet of Things (IoT)?

There’s no doubt that AR, VR, and IoT will continue to penetrate our lives and contribute to the evolution of technology. Dozens of successful AR/VR games continue to appear in stores. Some specific AR/VR SDKs are getting integrated into more and more applications. AI-at-edge enables IoT devices to be smarter, increase the comfort of consumers, optimize expenses in various industries, and make remote patient monitoring a reality. These technologies will bring the futuristic ideas from old TV series into reality. I’m super confident AR/VR and IoT will only continue evolving rather than fading away.

What do you think will be the future of Mobile technology?

Mobile technology has evolved to a point where it’s no longer hyped and increasingly fast-evolving. It’s harder to innovate, and every mobile vendor has more or less achieved the same level of maturity. You can see how iOS and Android devices are not THAT different anymore. But despite that, there’s still room for innovation like foldable/rollable phones, more powerful processors, more capable batteries, and mobile AR technology. When it comes to software development, cross-platform frameworks like Flutter, React Native, and Kotlin Multi-platform are getting more and more popular, although I’m confident they won’t completely replace native development.