Ludvig Kihlman

I'm a software engineer and technology leader, currently the Chief Technology Officer at Bonusway in Helsinki. I hold a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Essex, and my career has moved between academic research and building software products that people actually use.

My doctorate looked at how domain-specific languages can be composed, and what composition means for reuse. That work produced two peer-reviewed papers at the Computer Science and Electronic Engineering (CEEC) conferences. Alongside my studies I worked as a graduate teaching assistant, teaching and marking everything from introductory programming to databases and formal methods — which is where I learned to explain technical ideas clearly.

From 2018 to 2021 I was a full stack engineer at Edina, part of the University of Edinburgh, building software for teaching and research. That covered a lot of ground: text and data mining tools, Noteable (notebooks in the cloud), and Digimap (mapping software), mostly in Python and Java with Django and Kubernetes behind them.

Since 2021 I've worked at Bonusway, a cashback company with five million active users — first as a senior developer, now as Chief Technology Officer. I lead the engineering team and look after the whole stack: an Angular website, a React app, and a PHP backend, including a recommender system built on natural language processing and co-training.

I'm happiest working across the whole stack, from language and API design down to the database, and I've built everything from embedded C++ interfaces to database tooling. I care about software that is clear, well-tested, and easy for the next person to pick up.