§ 001Personal Profile

Full-stack productengineerwho ships.

Eight years building products end-to-end at YC-backed startups - from typed frontends and design systems to the APIs, databases and infra behind them. Founder of Basetool Labs and Sussur. Co-author of Avo, the OSS Rails admin framework. IEEE SMC 2020 Best Paper. Ironman finisher.

See selected work →david@basetool.ai Download CV ↗

08: years shipping product
03: YC-backed teams
150K+: users at The Social Cat
1.5M+: profiles in the pipeline

Trusted stack · Where the work has shipped

The Social Cat

Oceaneering

Waydev

Avo HQ

Deloitte Digital

Amdocs

Basetool Labs

Sussur

Founder - Basetool Labs✦Founder - Sussur✦ex-Waydev · YC W21✦ex-Avo · YC S21✦ex-The Social Cat✦ex-Oceaneering✦ex-Deloitte Digital✦ex-Amdocs✦IEEE SMC 2020 · Best Paper✦Ironman Finisher✦BSc - University of Twente✦Building in public✦Founder - Basetool Labs✦Founder - Sussur✦ex-Waydev · YC W21✦ex-Avo · YC S21✦ex-The Social Cat✦ex-Oceaneering✦ex-Deloitte Digital✦ex-Amdocs✦IEEE SMC 2020 · Best Paper✦Ironman Finisher✦BSc - University of Twente✦Building in public✦

§ 002Now

Three things on the desk.

Building product, running a studio, shipping a native macOS tool. Every one has code going into production this week.

Product · macOS · 2026 →

↗

Sussur

Solo founder

Real-time sales coaching for the speaker - objection handling, influence cues, all on-device. Audio never leaves your Mac. 96/500 founding cohort, 8 signed LOIs. Rethought calendars, notes, to-dos and inbox for use with AI agents (formerly Sixthly).

Studio · 2025 →

↗

Basetool Labs

Founder & lead engineer

AI-augmented software studio.. Production-ready MVPs in 4–8 weeks. Senior engineer signs off on every line, evals + security review before ship. 100% code ownership.

Practice · 2020 →

↗

Building in public

Blog · GitHub · X · Instagram

Notes on AI-native engineering, shipping small teams, and the CEE tech community. Weekly on the Basetool Labs blog, daily on X and Instagram, commits on GitHub.

§ 003Work

Full-stack, production, real users.

From founding-engineer roles to product-owning IC work. Every line shipped, measured, iterated.

Apr 2023 - Dec 2025
The Social Cat
London (remote)
Product Engineer
Ran product + engineering with the CTO on a three-person team at a fast-growing influencer-marketing SaaS.
- Owned the Next.js + NestJS + GraphQL stack end-to-end. Scaled from ~15K to 150K+ users in under two years.
- Built creator-discovery UI over an ML pipeline of 1.5M+ Instagram & TikTok profiles (~10K/day ingest).
- Designed GraphQL contracts and integrated TikTok & Meta APIs for creator verification and campaigns.
- Owned observability: A/B tests, GA4/Mixpanel funnels, error tracking. Quarterly retention +15%, organic sessions +32%.
TypeScriptReactNext.jsNestJSGraphQLPostgreSQLAWS
Aug 2022 - May 2023
Oceaneering
Global (remote)
Software Engineer - OceanSMART
Container-shipping ERP used by global logistics teams to plan and track vessel and container ops.
- Shipped React + GraphQL UI and a data auto-fill connector that cut manual entry 25–30% on critical workflows.
- Delivered map enrichment (real-time vessel routes, layered geospatial data) for multi-port operations.
- Refactored a two-year-old frontend dep stack - improved security posture and deployment reliability.
TypeScriptReactNode.jsGraphQLMongoDB
Oct 2021 - Aug 2022
Waydev
San Francisco (remote) · YC W21
Founding Software Engineer
Engineering-analytics platform for enterprise engineering leaders.
- Owned core parts of the main app (Laravel + Vue). Built dashboards for cycle time, PR throughput, review metrics used daily by enterprise customers.
- Migrated the platform to Laravel Octane - response time and uptime stability up ~35% under load.
- Built a notifications microservice across in-app, email, Slack, Teams and Google Chat.
Vue.jsLaravelRedisMySQLAWS
Jul 2021 - Jan 2022
Basetool (v1)
Constanța
Co-Founder
TypeScript/React/Next.js platform to bring data under one roof from the tools a technical team already uses.
- Built the fields model, the filtering system, views and role-based permissions.
- Shipped an early adopter beta with pilot customers and technical validation.
TypeScriptReactNext.jsReduxPostgreSQL
May 2020 - Aug 2021
Avo HQ
Remote · Open source · YC S21
Co-Founder & Engineer
Configuration-based admin framework for Ruby on Rails - still actively maintained at avohq.io.
- Co-built the UI layer and configuration system: reusable view components, form fields, filtering, roles & permissions.
- Ran an OSS codebase publicly: reviewed contributions, wrote docs and RFCs, supported an external dev community.
- Completed YC Startup School and the Launch.ro incubator with the team.
Ruby on RailsHotwireStimulusTailwindPostgreSQL
Nov 2018 - Aug 2021
Earlier
Amdocs · Deloitte Digital · Notaries of Romania · EcoKnights
Software Engineer · Consultant · Intern
Enterprise Java, Salesforce, and government-workflow digitisation before the startup years.
- Amdocs - Java & Spring microservices for Vodafone Romania's Digital Experience platform.
- Deloitte Digital - Shipped Cloud4M (LWC + Apex). Salesforce Certified Admin & Platform Dev I in under six months.
- Notaries of Romania - Digitised state workflows; shipped a security-heavy internal meetings + documents app.
- EcoKnights KL - Built a volunteer platform for a Malaysian sustainability NGO.
JavaSpringSalesforceLWCApex

§ 004Ventures

Companies I've built or co-built.

Three bets, three timelines. One studio shipping client work, one solo consumer product, one open-source project still in production.

Basetool Labs

AI-augmented software studio

Production software in 4–8 weeks. Senior review on every line. Evals and security pass before ship. Full IP transfer.

Visit site

Role · Period

Founder & lead engineer

2025 → Present

Status

Active

Metric

MVPs in 4–8 wks

Sussur

Real-time sales coaching · macOS

On-device coach for the speaker. Voss-grade objection handling, Cialdini-grade influence cues. Audio never leaves the Mac.

Join the waitlist

Role · Period

Solo founder

2026 → Present

Status

Building

Metric

8 signed LOIs

Avo HQ

Open source · Rails admin

Configuration-based admin framework for Ruby on Rails. YC S21. Still actively maintained by the core team.

GitHub repo

Role · Period

Co-founder

2020 → 2021

Status

OSS · YC S21

Metric

Still shipping

§ 005Toolkit

What I reach for.

Full-stack by default. Deep on TypeScript + React, comfortable owning schemas, services and infra.

Frontend: TypeScript · React · Next.js · Vue · Redux · Tailwind · Vite · Webpack · component libraries · a11y · design tokens
Backend: Node.js · NestJS · Laravel · Ruby on Rails · Java / Spring · Apex · exposure to Rust
APIs & data: REST · GraphQL · gRPC · Protobuf · WebSockets · PostgreSQL · MongoDB · Redis · MySQL
Visualisation: D3 · custom charting · real-time dashboards · geospatial UI · operational telemetry
Platform: Docker · AWS · GCP · Railway · GitHub Actions · Sentry · Vercel
Practice: RFCs · code review · pair programming · mentoring · A/B testing · production monitoring
AI: Cursor · Claude Code · Lovable · OpenAI / Anthropic / Gemini APIs · AI SDK · RAG · pgvector · embeddings · evals · prompt design · agentic workflows

§ 006Build log · Writing in public

Notes from the workshop.

I build in public - weekly on the blog, daily on X and Instagram, commits on GitHub. Everything below is a real post.

Read the full blog →Follow on X ↗Instagram ↗GitHub ↗

§ 007Recognition · Languages · Off-screen

Receipts.

Awards & publications

2020Best Paper Award · 31st Twente Student Conference on IT
2020IEEE SMC 2020 · neural language models for medical report writing
2021YC S21 · Avo HQ
2022YC W21 · founding engineer at Waydev
2023 →Ironman finisher · long-distance triathlon

Languages

RomanianNative
EnglishFluent · C2
GermanProfessional · B2 (Goethe DSD)
DutchElementary · A2

Education

BSc Technical Computer Science
University of Twente · Final grade 9/10 · 2016–2019
Mathematics-Informatics
National College Mircea cel Bătrân, Constanța · 9.06/10

Off-screen

Ironman training
Reading
TED & tech YouTube
Hiking & snowboarding
Cooking (Asian bias)

Certifications

Salesforce Certified Administrator · 2020
Salesforce Platform Developer I · 2020
Deutsches Sprachdiplom B2 · Goethe-Institut
ECDL Core Certificate

§ 008Press & speaking

Available for podcasts, panels and press.

Topics: AI-native engineering, founding engineering, consumer product shipping, Rails developer tooling.

Short bio

David Marin is the founder of Basetool Labs, an AI-augmented custom-software studio, and Sussur, a Mac-native sales coach. Previously Product Engineer at The Social Cat and co-founder of the Ruby on Rails admin framework Avo.

Long bio

David Marin is a full-stack product engineer, founder of Basetool Labs and Sussur. Previously Product Engineer at The Social Cat, Software Engineer at Oceaneering and YC W21 startup Waydev, and co-founder of the open-source Rails admin framework Avo (avohq.io). Earlier work at Amdocs (Vodafone Romania), Deloitte Digital (Salesforce) and the National Union of Public Notaries. BSc Computer Science, University of Twente. Best Paper at IEEE SMC 2020. Ironman finisher, four languages, based in Constanța.

High-res headshot on request · Press contact: david@basetool.ai

§ 009Contact