Tomas Novak · oriven.org

IT leader. Technical builder. Systems thinker.

I help teams ship real software and run real infrastructure — from mobile apps and event tooling to the automation that keeps it all working.

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About

I've spent my career at the intersection of IT leadership and hands-on technical work. I lead delivery and operations, but I also build, script, fix, and automate. My natural habitat is between strategy and execution — the place where a plan has to become a working system.

Based in Slovakia, working with people across continents. Most comfortable when something needs to be made to work.

What I do

A technical generalist with a leadership spine.

Technology leadership

Shaping direction, hiring, and structuring how a team delivers. Turning ambition into something the team can actually execute on Monday morning.

Mobile & product delivery

From concept to the store, across iOS and Android. Familiar with the realities of release cycles, app reviews, and consumer-facing edge cases.

Infrastructure & automation

Cloud, on-prem, tooling, and the glue between them. The unglamorous layer where reliability actually lives.

Cross-continental teams

Working relationships with engineers and operations teams across India, North Africa, the Balkans, and Slovakia. Different time zones, different cultures, one shared standard.

Systems thinking

Connecting people, processes, and technology so the whole thing actually runs — not just the part that demos well.

Practical execution

Most of the value I bring isn't in the headline project. It's in quietly making complicated things boringly reliable.

How I work

A handful of principles, not a manifesto.

  1. 01

    Start with what works.

    Fix what doesn't. Ship. Refine. Avoid the rewrite that solves nothing.

  2. 02

    Clarity over cleverness.

    Plain words, simple diagrams, honest trade-offs. Clever loses at 3 a.m.

  3. 03

    Documentation is part of the product.

    If the next person can't operate it without calling me, we're not done.

  4. 04

    Systems beat heroics.

    Heroes are nice. Systems that don't need heroes are better.

  5. 05

    Respect the people doing the work.

    Clear direction, room to decide, honest feedback. In that order.

  6. 06

    Done is better than perfect — but only just.

    Ship it when it's good enough to learn from. Then actually learn from it.

Interests & things I build

Outside work, I like things that are real.

Home Assistant & home infrastructure

A house that mostly does what it promises. Sensors, automations, and a healthy distrust of anything that only works in the cloud.

RAM 1500 & practical builds

A truck that gets practical — and sometimes not-so-practical — modifications. A useful reminder that mechanical systems don't care about your roadmap.

Tools, systems, and how things get built

Reading, occasionally writing, mostly building. Interested in how good work actually happens, not just how it's described afterwards.

Contact

If we've met — or we haven't yet.

If we ran into each other somewhere and you want to continue the conversation, this is the right place. Same if we haven't met and you'd like to.

I don't publish my email here — a small stand against bots. The form below goes straight to my inbox.