About Me
Engineer, Leader,
Builder
I'm Hieu Tran — a Principal Engineer based in Da Nang, Vietnam. For over 12 years, I've been building software systems, leading engineering teams, and helping companies modernize their technology. I believe great software comes from great teams, and I'm passionate about building both.
By the numbers
What I Do
I operate at the intersection of architecture, leadership, and hands-on engineering.
System Architecture
Designing distributed systems and microservices that scale with business growth. From monolith migrations to greenfield builds.
Engineering Leadership
Building and mentoring high-performing teams. Defining OKRs, career paths, and engineering culture that ships.
Cloud & DevOps
Azure, AWS, Kubernetes, Terraform — building production infrastructure with automation-first mindset.
AI Adoption
Helping teams integrate AI into their workflows — from LLM-powered tools to intelligent automation pipelines.
Technical Strategy
Aligning technology decisions with business goals. Making pragmatic tradeoffs that deliver value.
.NET Ecosystem
12+ years deep in .NET — from Framework to .NET 8. ABP, Entity Framework, gRPC, high-performance APIs.
What I Believe
Principles that guide how I build software and lead teams.
- 1
Ship, then iterate
Perfect is the enemy of shipped. Get it working, get it in front of users, then make it better based on real feedback.
- 2
Invest in people first
Technology changes every few years. A strong engineering culture compounds forever. I spend more time on team growth than tech decisions.
- 3
Automate the boring stuff
If a human is doing repetitive work, something is broken. CI/CD, infrastructure as code, automated testing — automate everything.
The Journey
From writing my first lines of code to leading engineering organizations.
HCMUS → First Steps (2008-2013)
Computer Science at Ho Chi Minh University of Science. Built the foundation in algorithms, data structures, and fell in love with building things.
Growth Years (2013-2021)
From junior developer to senior engineer across multiple companies. Full-stack .NET, Android, cloud migrations. Learned that code is only half the job — the other half is understanding the problem.
Leadership & Architecture (2021-Present)
Head of Engineering at SmartDev, then Principal Engineer. Led teams of 12+, architected systems processing €10M/month, and discovered that the most impactful engineering is enabling others to do their best work.
Let's connect
Whether you want to discuss architecture, leadership, or just talk tech — I'm always up for a good conversation.