vlaja

Hi, I'm vlaja. I'm co-founder and CTO of PROTOTYP — a design-driven software agency that ships UX, products, and infrastructure for clients of all sizes, around the world. We're based in Osijek, Croatia, around 35–40 people, and we've been at it since 2016.

We're the pick when you need an agile, sharp, highly technical, no-nonsense team focused on delivering on business goals — not just shipping software.

My day-to-day is the cloud and services side of the house: architecture, infrastructure, and the security posture of everything we ship and run. A lot of TypeScript and a lot of Terraform, plus the engineering standards that keep a small team shipping like a much larger one.

Lately I'm spending weekend cycles on Rust. Go is on my radar too — mostly because there are Terraform providers I'd like to write in it.

What I write about

Mostly the things that took me three drafts to get right. Expect:

• cloud architecture on AWS (and GCP, when it's the right answer) — the parts the docs don't dwell on
• pragmatic security and least-privilege IAM that doesn't slow teams down
• patterns I actually reach for day to day, and the reasons I trust them over the alternatives
• Terraform, IaC discipline, and keeping infra reviewable
• where agentic programming is going, and what "efficient at it" actually looks like
• building and leading small, sharp engineering teams

Quick facts

Opinions here are my own — a small nugget of personal writing in a world of AI-generated everything (of which I'm also guilty).

If something's wrong, push back. I'm always open to good arguments, discussions, and learning something new. Ego is the mind-killer; let's make better conclusions together.