Welcome to

PAVLVS.DEV

Engineering meaning for humans, machines, and developers.

#about

I'm Pavel Mihaylov, a hands-on technical expert with 18+ years of experience designing and scaling semantic data systems. I played a foundational role in the evolution of GraphDB — building core architecture, solving critical bugs, and launching features adopted by some of the world’s largest enterprises.

I’ve led everything from system design and security architecture to developer tooling, product integrations, and LLM-based interfaces — including revamping an acquired product to enterprise quality. I'm equally comfortable writing Java, untangling distributed bugs, or helping teams plan for the next 10x scale.

Now working independently, I help teams modernize semantic infrastructure, integrate LLMs and AI into real-world systems, and stabilize complex platforms — with a focus on quality, performance, and long-term maintainability.

I’ve authored 17.1% of the GraphDB engine and 61.4% of the GraphDB connectors, making me one of the top contributors to the platform. If you’re using GraphDB, there’s a good chance you’re running my code.

GraphDB Knowledge Graphs Semantic Web RDF SPARQL SHACL OWL RDF4J Ontop LLM Integration Java Lucene Solr Elasticsearch OpenSearch Kafka Maven CI/CD Docker Security Architecture LDAP OpenID Connect OAuth 2.0 Test Automation System Architecture Technical Debugging Legacy Refactoring Enterprise Readiness Technical Product Strategy

#experience

Technical Fellow (provisional role)

Senior technical role focused on solving complex engineering problems, architecture, and cross-product technical direction. The role was created during the development of a new senior technical career track and was not formally defined before my departure.

Ontotext (Graphwise)

2025 – 2026
  • Resolved major technical inefficiencies in PoolParty, reducing memory consumption by up to 50% and accelerating some operations by up to 50×.
  • Designed and implemented a new multilingual tagging engine based on Lucene, providing a scalable foundation for text annotation across languages.
  • Designed and implemented a new licensing framework for the company’s entire product portfolio, establishing a common architecture for licensing across products.
  • Provided hands-on technical leadership across product boundaries, tackling high-impact engineering problems requiring deep architectural and implementation expertise.

GraphDB Product Manager

Led the product roadmap and strategy for GraphDB, with a strong technical focus.

Ontotext

2021 – 2025
  • Pioneered LLM and AI integrations
    • Invented and delivered Talk to Your Graph v1 and v2.
    • Integrated LLMs into SPARQL and Workbench for natural language querying.
  • Designed and implemented the Fine-grained Access Control (FGAC) security layer.
  • Developed the Sequences plugin to support sequence-aware data modeling.
  • Redesigned connector filtering to support broader enterprise integration scenarios.
  • Created interactive user guides in Workbench to improve onboarding and UX.
  • Simplified GraphDB 10 architecture and deployment
    • Unified all editions into a single distribution.
    • Consolidated repository types into a single, consistent model.
  • Helped guide the technical transformation of PoolParty post-acquisition, focusing on reducing technical debt, improving test stability, and preparing the product for enterprise deployment.

GraphDB Architect and Technical Lead

Owned major technical decisions and architectural direction for GraphDB.

Ontotext

2016 – 2021
  • Designed and implemented core platform features
    • Visual Graph view for data exploration.
    • Internal SPARQL federation.
    • Update monitoring tools.
    • Graph replacement mechanisms.
    • JDBC and Ontop integration for RDB interoperability.
  • Architected GraphDB’s security infrastructure
    • Secure cluster communication.
    • Authentication via LDAP, OpenID/OAuth, and Kerberos.
  • Implemented the Kafka connector for streaming integration.
  • Developed Change Tracking and Data History plugins.
  • Implemented the RDF Mapper backend in OntoRefine.
  • Contributed core RDF-star and SPARQL-star support to RDF4J.

GraphDB DevEx Team Lead

Led the Developer Experience team, focused on integrations, tooling, and product usability.

Ontotext

2014 – 2016
  • Engineered and launched GraphDB connectors (Lucene, Solr, Elasticsearch).
  • Led development of key Workbench components for user interaction and visualization.
  • Launched the GraphDB Free edition to expand community adoption.
  • Integrated OntoRefine for tabular data import and transformation.
  • Matured GraphDB as a product
    • Adopted Maven as a unified build system.
    • Migrated from WAR deployments to standalone distribution.
    • Created the GraphDB Desktop application for easy local usage.

Team Lead, Senior Software Engineer

Led development and operations of data extraction and mining systems.

Ontotext

2008 – 2014
  • Developed the Web Mining Framework for scalable web scraping.
  • Built the Identity Resolution Framework for entity linking.
  • Delivered vertical-specific extractors (e.g., job boards, car sales).