Emil Petkov

Background

About Emil Petkov

Experienced C-level technology executive with international and multicultural experience. Self-starter, with 2 businesses started from ground zero on the tech side. Previously, has taken roles as lead software engineer, software architect, Head of IT, CISO, and CTO. Currently, GROUP CTO and Executive Board member of a growing payment group owning the technology area, juggling 100+ people. Has 15+ years commercial-grade experience in a wide variety of projects ranging from outsourcing solutions to complex product engineering having built loyalty systems, e-commerce platforms, payment gateways, billing and reconciliation systems, e-wallets, voucher schemes, and more. Vast knowledge about the e-commerce and payment ecosystems and its players, having spent the last decade working on the merchant side, PSP side, acquirer side, and the card issuer side, in that order. 15+ years of enterprise-grade programming experience with different technology stacks, tools, and paradigms (Java/J2EE, Ruby/Rails, JRuby, Go, JavaScript, Perl, Linux, etc.) 10+ years of building & leading Engineering, Infrastructure (Devops), QA, and DBA teams as architect and chief engineer (performed 1500+ interviews) 12+ years of team, project, and technical management of complex products and platform engineering 10+ years technically running a payment group with own payment service provider (PSP), acquiring bank, e-wallet operator, and more 10+ years of managing PA-DSS and PCI-DSS compliance and related payment security audits such as ISO 27001 and ISAE 3402, in a CISO role 10+ years of large-scale infrastructure experience, managing/guiding DevOps teams but also hands-on implementing and administering components in an open-source, HA environment 10+ years managing production and deployment setups of critical payment processing systems, with a minimum of 99.99% uptime (300+ servers) 3+ years high-end e-commerce platform engineering 6+ years of strategic technical decision making in a GROUP CTO role 8+ years technically running an acquiring bank as a CTO