Portrait of Bobby Iliev
Fig. 02 — Bobby Iliev

The short version

Hi, I'm Bobby Iliev

I write about DevOps — Linux, Docker, Kubernetes, databases, and the shell scripts that quietly hold everything together. Most posts here start as notes I wrote for myself while fixing something at 2am.

Everything is written in public, kept short, and tested before it ships. If a tip here saves you an afternoon, that's the whole point.

Bobby Iliev

DevOps tips

Where I've been

The long version

2022 — Now

Founder & everything else

Bobby Iliev

The one-person studio. Brand, web, and product work for founders who want one accountable human instead of a slide deck of departments.

2019 — 2022

Design lead

Northwind

Led a four-person team through a full replatform and rebrand. Learned that shipping beats presenting, and wrote the design system that outlived my tenure.

2017 — 2019

Senior product designer

Hexlab

Design systems and growth work for a developer-tools startup. Discovered that engineers are the best design critics you'll ever get for free.

2015 — 2017

Designer & front-end developer

Studio Anansi

Brand and web for cultural clients — galleries, festivals, one opera house. Where I learned that budgets are creative constraints wearing a disguise.

2014 — 2015

Junior designer

Freelance, badly

Underpriced everything, overdelivered everything, slept rarely. Kept the lessons, dropped the invoicing spreadsheet.

The house rules

How I work

01

Loud, not confusing

Boldness is a volume knob, not a blindfold. Every screamer earns its place by making the message clearer, never by decorating it.

02

Ship the weird version

The safe option gets you a site nobody remembers and nobody argues with. If a concept doesn't make someone on the call slightly nervous, it's beige.

03

Fast is a feature

Every page ships light and loads now. Speed is the one aesthetic choice every visitor notices, on every device, every single time.

04

One human, end to end

Strategy, design, and code from the same brain. No handoffs, no telephone game, no 'the dev team interpreted it differently'.

Brand identity Web design Development Art direction Design systems No beige

Got a project?

Let's make something loud

One email, no forms, no discovery-call maze. Tell me what you're building and I'll reply within two working days.

[email protected]

Currently booking for Q3 2026