Arash Taherkalateh

Software engineer with over 8 years of experience across finance, gaming, and customer-focused web platforms. I believe in building with empathy, and I actively use and study the products I help develop to better understand the customer journey.

I thrive in environments where engineers take ownership, not just of code but of outcomes, and where teams are empowered to solve meaningful problems. I’ve also begun integrating AI into my development workflow and tooling, and I’m a strong advocate for using it to accelerate product innovation.

Work Experience

Volvo Cars — Software Engineer, Test Drive Experience

Stockholm, Sweden — 06/2024–Present
Worked on the development of Volvo’s new test drive platform, one of the key lead sources for car purchases. The platform supports the entire test drive journey for both customers and retailers.

• Developed core features for Volvo’s test drive scheduling system, integrating multiple providers including Salesforce.
  
• Built tools for customers to book appointments and for retailers to manage bookings and available vehicles.

Tech stack: Go, Node.js, React, GraphQL, GitHub Actions, ArgoCD, PostgreSQL, Grafana, Azure

Klarna Bank AB — Software Engineer, Native Banking Network Team

Stockholm, Sweden — 05/2022–05/2024
Klarna is a leading provider of online financial services, offering solutions for online payments and post-purchase financing.

• Collaborated in an 8-member team to develop SEPA payment methods: SEPA Instant, direct debit, and credit transfer.
  
• Worked with cloud infrastructure, CI/CD pipelines, and distributed systems.

Tech stack: Java, Typescript, Node.js, AWS (RDS, SQS, EventBridge), Jenkins, Terraform, Kafka

Deriv Services Sdn Bhd — Backend Developer, Data Feed Team

Cyberjaya, Malaysia — 02/2020–05/2022
Deriv.com is a 24/7 online trading platform offering a wide range of derivatives.

• Led development and maintenance of price feed infrastructure, integrating with liquidity providers and distributing asset prices.
  
• Partnered with quantitative analysts to design new financial products.
  
• Scaled infrastructure to handle 150% more traffic and reduced tick latency from 800ms to 60ms.

Tech stack: Perl, Node.js, PostgreSQL, Redis, Chef, AWS EC2, Docker, Datadog

Paeezan Game Studio — Backend Engineer

Tehran, Iran — 02/2017–02/2018
Developer of the multiplayer strategy game Mafioso.

• Sole back-end developer; scaled game to thousands of concurrent players.
  
• Implemented new numerous features, including clan battles, leaderboards and replay system.

Tech stack: Node.js, Redis, MongoDB, FluentD, RabbitMQ

Rayvarz Software Engineering — C# Programmer, R&D Department

Tehran, Iran — 04/2013–10/2016
Rayvarz is a leading Iranian software company focused on ERP and MIS systems.

• Transitioned from apprentice to full-time developer by delivering a semantic code obfuscation tool using C#.
  
• Contributed to projects including an in-house CI/CD system, HTTP/2 proxy gateway, and BPMS exception handling improvements.

Tech stack: C#, Node.js, PostgreSQL, MSSQL, AngularJS

Personal Projects

• Pensive — A bookmarking solution to help building your own searchable memory of the web
• GPGPU Programming Research — Conducted research using PyOpenCL to enhance parallel processing on GPUs through hybrid techniques
• Radio Daal Podcast — Long form conversation with diasporas (In Persian)
• Rikhtar — 3D printed concrete sculptures

Education

M.Sc. Computer Engineering — Qazvin University, Qazvin, Iran (2014–2016) B.Sc. Computer Engineering — Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran (2009–2013)