Razvan Opris, From Internship to Owning the Architecture

Razvan Opris, From Internship to Owning the Architecture

A strong foundation, deep mentorship, and trust are the fuel for rapid professional growth in engineering. Razvan Opris’s career, who joined us four years ago as an intern and is now a Lead Front-End Engineer on a complex project within a  German Luxury OEM Lab, is a powerful example of this. His journey shows how a commitment to technical excellence enables engineers to quickly take on significant architectural ownership and drive impactful digital change.

Project & Your Role: How did you reach your current role?

I’m currently the lead front-end engineer on this project. My entire professional journey as an engineer started at Fortech, which  became GlobalLogic back in February 2024. I joined the company almost four years ago, as a front-end intern. After about three months, I was brought onto this team, where I was fortunate to be mentored directly by our lead architect. I spent that time absorbing everything I could about our systems, best practices, and the ‘why’ behind our technical decisions. 

That foundation allowed me to grow quickly, and I eventually moved from being mentored to taking on architectural responsibilities myself, designing and building a new front-end application. Now as a Senior Software Engineer, my career here has come full circle, as I’m using this deep, hands-on experience to lead one of our most critical initiatives: migrating the front-end for a large, legacy application to a new, modern framework. It’s a challenging role that I feel I’ve been building toward ever since my first day as an intern.

Engineering Impact: What is the core mission of your project?

The core mission of this project is to improve the customer experience and drive user retention. We’re essentially migrating our legacy application to a modern stack, and the business impact will be a significantly faster, more reliable, and more intuitive product. 

The specific problem our team solves is the performance and usability bottleneck that the old app has become. Our customers were facing slow load times and a frustrating, outdated interface. So, our team is directly fixing those pain points, which we expect will lower customer cancellations and increase engagement substantially.

Tech Stack & Breakthroughs: What was your team’s biggest technical win?

The primary front-end stack is built on Angular and TypeScript. We heavily leverage the full Angular ecosystem, including its powerful dependency injection, a reactive approach using RxJS for managing asynchronous data, and the Angular CLI for a consistent development workflow. The most complex technical challenge we recently overcame was directly tied to our biggest milestone: successfully launching our new application from scratch.

My role in this was to lead and own the entire front-end architecture. The challenge wasn’t a single bug, but the immense responsibility of making every key architectural decision for a greenfield project. We achieved this by first designing a scalable and maintainable application and then choosing and implementing our state management strategy. We also had to rigorously define all data flow patterns and our API integration layer, followed by setting up the project’s testing and quality assurance framework.

The reality was anticipating future needs and potential bottlenecks before a single line of code was written. We had to build an application that could not only meet today’s requirements but also scale for years to come. Successfully delivering that application into production, and having it perform reliably from day one, was the culmination of overcoming that challenge. It validated those foundational architectural decisions and gave the team a stable, modern platform to build on.

The Team Vibe: What makes your project team unique?

I’d describe our culture as one of deep ownership and mutual investment. The dynamic is very collaborative and pragmatic. We’re a team of problem-solvers who have been focused on this product for a while, so there’s a high level of trust and very little ego. We share knowledge openly and are focused on getting the right solution, not just our solution. What makes us both unique and successful is our commitment to growing our own talent.

I’m the perfect example of this. I started on this team as an intern, and they actively mentored me, invested in my growth, and gave me the opportunities that allowed me to become a senior engineer who now leads our front-end architecture. Our success comes from that cycle, we invest in our people, our people become experts, and those experts build a great product.

“While Razvan is a brilliant engineer, I actually got to know him in a different capacity! The Oradea core of the Lab takes their sports very seriously, and I had the opportunity of playing padel with them. Razvan was by far the best coaching partner I’ve had. With skills light-years ahead of mine, he had the patience for explaining and the empathy for encouraging, all while winning crazy points. Patience, empathy, and talent are skills that translate very well from work to the padel court and vice versa. Razvan is a prime example of the values our Lab instills. Beyond raising first-class engineers, for me, it represents a group of people who make me feel welcome, who are always ready to lend a helping hand, who laugh a lot and don’t take themselves too seriously. They are proud as they are talented, and they love and appreciate good food. A true community.” Agota Radoi-Riger, Director, Engineering

Razvan and his team enjoying a team dinner

Project Takeaway: The most valuable skill you’ve gained?

The most valuable skill I’ve gained is the critical difference between just writing code and truly owning an architecture. When I was tasked with designing the new Angular application from scratch, I was no longer just implementing a feature. I had to make every foundational decision, from our state management strategy with RxJS to the core component library, knowing that the team and the business would have to live with those choices for years. 

Now, as I work on migrating the old application, that insight is reinforced every day. I am seeing firsthand the long-term technical debt and slowdowns that result from past architectural decisions. This project has taught me to think less like a developer and more like an architect. 

My most important job isn’t just to make the app work today, but to ensure it’s scalable, maintainable, and efficient for its entire lifespan. Seeing the new app live and performing well has been the ultimate validation of that long-term mindset.

Advice from the Frontlines: Key takeaway for new team members?

My single best piece of advice is to always build with empathy for the next developer, and always assume that developer will be you in several years.

“I believe raising engineers is fundamental to the success of any endeavor in IT. You raise them to have the right toolset, the right expertise, the right approach. Mindset, on the other hand, cannot be taught. You don’t raise them to have the right mindset, you choose the ones that have the right mindset and you build upon that. I am extremely proud of how our interns get selected and trained. I am delighted to see them evolve into talented engineers. I know I can trust them to carry out complex, high-responsibility tasks. It is a true team effort to make this happen, generation after generation. Razvan is a brilliant example of talent, consistency, hard work, and the right mindset. We are happy to have him as a valued member of our community.” – Vlad Bura, Director, Engineering.