Pauline P. Bakhtiari (née Narvas)

Head of Community Platforms at Vercel with a track record across community strategy, developer education, event programming, and cross-functional leadership.


EXPERIENCE

06/2024 — Present

Head of Community Platforms, Vercel

Leading a team of DX engineers focused on helping more developers become confident Vercel experts.

07/2021 — 05/2024

Head of Community, Ona (formerly Gitpod)

Led the community team, managed community engineers, built the Ona (formerly Gitpod) community from zero, and launched global programs, events, and content that helped it scale.

01/2021 — 07/2021

Platform Engineer, Sky Betting & Gaming

Developed automation scripts, managed production applications, scaled infrastructure, and enhanced resilience using technologies like Kubernetes, AWS, and Docker.

07/2020 — 12/2020

Site Reliability Engineer, BT

Established cloud standards, and implemented initiatives to enhance system reliability, security, and cost efficiency.

09/2018 — 07/2020

Digital Engineering Graduate, BT

A two-year rotational program across the engineering organisation (architecture, software, platform and site reliability engineering)

PROJECTS

2023 — 2024

Ona (formerly Gitpod) Community meet-up network

Built a global network of 15 meet-ups with 350 attendees and 600 members, including partnerships with AWS for three events.

2023

Cloud Development Environment (CDE) Universe

Organized and led the first in-person conference in San Francisco for 120 attendees, managing all aspects including logistics, marketing, and serving as the MC.

2021 — 2024

Ona (formerly Gitpod) Community Heroes

Developed and launched an ambassador program to recognize and reward active contributors in the Ona (formerly Gitpod) community, successfully onboarding 30+ Heroes globally.

2021 — 2024

Ona (formerly Gitpod) Screencasts

Produced educational screencasts showcasing best practices and advanced features of Ona (formerly Gitpod), resulting in a 33-video playlist that attracted over 15,000 views.

2021 — 2024

Ona (formerly Gitpod) Community

Built the community from zero to 40,000+ members and shaped it into a vibrant, high-trust space for users.

COMMUNITIES

2016 — 2021

Lead Instructor, Code First Girls

2021

Founder, Ladies in DevOps

2017 — 2018

Community Organiser, MedTech Sheffield

EDUCATION

2014 — 2018

Biomedical Sciences with Employment Experience, The University of Sheffield

WORKFLOW

Skills

  • community building
  • leadership
  • team building
  • problem solving
  • developer relations
  • public speaking
  • content creation
  • event planning
  • project management

Tools

  • discord
  • discourse
  • figma
  • github
  • linear
  • notion
  • slack
  • wordpress
  • vercel
  • claude
  • v0

Technology

  • aws
  • css
  • docker
  • kubernetes
  • javascript
  • react
  • python
  • nextjs
  • ai

CERTIFICATIONS

12/2021

Kubernetes and Cloud Native Associate, Linux Foundation

12/2020

Solutions Architect Associate, Amazon Web Services

11/2019

Certified Cloud Practitioner, Amazon Web Services