Dan Stefan Oprean
VP Engineering / CTO / CISO at PRYPCO
Technology executive with 20+ years in technology and 10+ in executive leadership, scaling regulated platforms across PropTech, FinTech, and digital assets. Partner to the board on technology strategy, regulated growth, and platform investment, with concurrent CISO/DPO accountability for security and compliance. Experienced in owning full-product architecture, engineering execution, hiring, DevSecOps, customer-facing technical decisions, and platform reliability from MVP to scale. Focused on leading distributed engineering teams, embedding security and privacy into the SDLC, and using AI to accelerate engineering, compliance, and operational workflows.
Experiences
PRYPCO
Aug 2024 - Present
Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Technology-first PropTech platform focused on real estate access, fractional investment, mortgages, Golden Visa services, agent enablement, and regulated tokenized ownership.
VP of Engineering
Oct 2025 - Present
Responsibilities:
- Own technology strategy and engineering execution across multiple business verticals, regulated products, and expansion initiatives, partnering with the board on platform investment decisions.
- Lead platform architecture for API-first, identity, payments, wallet, marketplace, compliance, and AI-enabled systems.
- Introduced a prioritization model tied to regulatory risk, revenue impact, and operational readiness, reducing roadmap conflict and sharpening cross-functional delivery focus.
- Present technology strategy, platform risk, and regulated expansion plans directly to executive leadership and the board.
- Streamlined the engineering hiring process to improve candidate throughput and time-to-offer without compromising hiring quality.
CISO / DPO
Mar 2025 - Present
Responsibilities:
- Establish security, privacy, risk management, audit readiness, incident response, and governance practices for regulated platform operations.
- Guide regulatory and compliance audits, aligning cybersecurity and privacy governance with GDPR, regional data protection law, and ISO 27001-oriented controls.
- Embed security and privacy-by-design into identity, onboarding, custody, issuance, marketplace, and compliance workflows.
- Lead internal AI adoption across engineering, compliance, finance, and operations, including AI-assisted KYC/AML review, fraud detection, and decision-support workflows that reduce manual effort while keeping edge cases in human review.
Head of Engineering
Aug 2024 - Sep 2025
Responsibilities:
- Led the build and public launch of a regulated tokenized real estate platform from kickoff to production, owning technical strategy across product, engineering, and compliance.
- Built core platform capabilities for investor onboarding, property funding, token issuance, wallet flows, independent asset custody, and compliance-sensitive user journeys, working with banking, regulatory, and blockchain partners.
- Evolved the platform from primary tokenized issuance into a broader real-world asset offering, adding secondary marketplace capabilities and additional asset classes.
- Transitioned delivery from outsourced execution toward stronger in-house engineering ownership, maintainability, and architecture quality.
- Modernized core identity infrastructure onto an API-first IAM architecture, improving scalability and support for multi-product, multi-region operations.
DigyBite
Apr 2023 - Aug 2024
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Restaurant technology platform supporting digital ordering, owned customer channels, operational workflows, integrations, analytics, and multi-brand operations.
Chief Technology Officer
Apr 2023 - Aug 2024
Responsibilities:
- Led technology strategy for a dedicated restaurant software provider serving multi-brand food-service operations.
- Architected and scaled cloud-native platform capabilities for ordering, integrations, analytics, and operational workflows.
- Introduced DevOps, observability, and cloud infrastructure practices to improve reliability and incident recovery.
- Used OKRs, KPIs, platform analytics, and stakeholder prioritization to align engineering execution with business growth.
LeanScale
Dec 2021 - Mar 2023
Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Venture-building company translating early business concepts into MVPs, scalable platforms, delivery teams, and technical roadmaps across multiple industries.
Chief Technology Officer
Mar 2022 - Mar 2023
Responsibilities:
- Led technology strategy and engineering execution across a venture portfolio of startups, enterprise innovation projects, and partner-led products.
- Directed the engineering organization delivering parallel projects for multiple enterprise clients alongside venture-building initiatives.
- Managed an internal venture’s transition from incubation to a standalone startup and its integration into a strategic partner’s business, overseeing product, platform, hiring, and go-to-market through each stage.
- Directed launch and scaling efforts using lean product validation, reusable architectures, and cloud-native delivery practices.
- Owned product, platform, hiring, and go-to-market technical execution for ventures moving from incubation to independent scale.
Head of Engineering
Dec 2021 - Mar 2022
Responsibilities:
- Established engineering foundations, technical standards, delivery discipline, and production readiness practices.
- Introduced reusable delivery patterns for testing, deployment pipelines, documentation, release readiness, and handoff.
- Led cross-functional delivery for early-stage products under startup timelines.
United Acquisitions Management
Oct 2020 - Nov 2021
West Palm Beach, Florida
Business operations group where technology modernization, cloud systems, and process improvement supported growth and operating efficiency.
Chief Technology Officer
Oct 2020 - Nov 2021
Responsibilities:
- Led technology strategy across software systems, cloud operations, workflow modernization, cost controls, and growth objectives.
- Modernized legacy applications into cloud-native platforms with improved maintainability and operational resilience.
- Built and managed a focused engineering team with hiring, delivery practices, and technical standards for business-critical systems.
Unified Commerce Company
Apr 2014 - Sep 2020
Houston, Texas
E-commerce SaaS platform supporting online and in-store operations, customer stores, product catalogs, integrations, infrastructure, and operational tooling.
Chief Architect Officer / Acting CTO
Apr 2014 - Sep 2020
Responsibilities:
- Led technology strategy and architecture for a U.S.-focused e-commerce SaaS platform serving hundreds of customer stores.
- Helped transform a web design agency into a SaaS business with stronger product, infrastructure, and investment readiness.
- Owned cloud strategy, platform architecture, DevOps, infrastructure, security, vendor relationships, and engineering leadership.
- Re-architected legacy systems using microservices, infrastructure as code, containerization, observability, and security tooling.
FashionMix
Apr 2013 - Apr 2014
Brasov, Romania
Fashion-tech and social-commerce platform for designing, publishing, and sharing outfits assembled from large retail product catalogs.
Chief Technology Officer / Co-Founder
Apr 2013 - Apr 2014
Responsibilities:
- Co-founded and launched an interactive fashion platform with product discovery and visual outfit composition workflows.
- Architected a hybrid-cloud web application with a TypeScript-based drag-and-drop designer using HTML5 canvas.
- Built and led a small engineering team, introduced agile delivery practices, and brought the product from concept to launch.
Code Xenon
Sep 2009 - Present
Brasov, Romania
Custom software and consulting practice delivering web platforms, e-commerce solutions, integrations, infrastructure management, and performance optimization.
CEO / CTO
Sep 2009 - Present
Responsibilities:
- Lead architecture, delivery, infrastructure, and technical consulting across client projects and internal initiatives.
- Deliver custom web platforms, commerce systems, integrations, automation, and performance optimization.
- Manage client-facing technical decisions from discovery and architecture through production support.
Freelance
Jun 2005 - Sep 2009
Sibiu, Romania
Independent software engineering practice serving international clients across web, e-commerce, CMS, automation, and data-driven projects.
Freelance Software Engineer
Jun 2005 - Sep 2009
Responsibilities:
- Delivered custom web applications, e-commerce projects, CMS implementations, automation workflows, and data-oriented tools.
- Worked directly with global clients from requirements gathering through implementation, deployment, and support.
