Bio

current position: engineering manager @ fintech

age: 38

Backstory

A long time ago, in a galaxy not so far away, my story began. I was born with a passion for technology, I was hooked on building things. I spent hours playing Legos and other construction toys, attempting to create something out of nothing. When I had my first glimpse of a PC at the age of 7, it was a game changer.

After graduating from university, I started my professional career, first as a QA engineer, then as a junior software developer. I spent the next 8 years working as a software developer on various projects, rising from novice to principal engineer.

Along the way, I’ve worked mostly with technologies like Ruby, later adopting the more appropriate Go tech stack for better efficiency in distributed environments. This allowed me to gain experience in various principles, conventions and patterns. I learnt how to design and build efficient facilities, both in terms of engineering and product. The constant struggle between engineering perfection and the business needs became the new norm and was transformed into a perpetual balance between business expectations and engineering craftsmanship.

After a certain period of time, I moved from just writing the code to more fundamental activities. Instead of creating features, i started building up the foundation for entire applications. From being responsible only for the small part, i transitioned to being the owner of delivering the business value. My focus changed from pure engineering tasks to managing the very purpose of engineering: delivering impact.

This wasn’t something that could have been done by a single person. Every great product requires a team of exceptional individuals to follow that journey. It has become an integral part of my professional life to learn techniques for building such teams, creating an prolific environment for all team members and shaping processes to help people achieve our goals. This journey has helped me to understand the value and strength of a properly structured and motivated team, and what it is capable of achieving with the right kind of leadership.

The excitement of technology, the potential to contribute to something greater, the desire to create an impact that affects people’s lives has helped me in my career. It is a source of joy, excitement and passion, not just a 9 to 5 job.

Languages

• Russian - Native
• English - C1.

Knowledge

Hard

• Programming languages: Go, Ruby, Elixir, Java.
• Data: PostgreSQL, MySQL, Redis, ElasticSearch, MongoDB
• Data analysis/processing: Apache Spark, Apache Hadoop, Apache Druid
• Data distribution: RabbitMQ, Apache Kafka, Amazon SQS
• Experience with cloud computing platforms such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) using technologies such as Docker, K8s, and IaC.
• Able to analyze and troubleshoot technical issues, using techniques such as root cause analysis (RCA), fault tolerance, and chaos engineering.
• Able to use techniques such as technology radar, proof of concept (POC) and experimentation to evaluate and recommend emerging technologies.

Soft

• Strong leadership, focusing on building shared purpose and vision, and motivating team members to achieve goals and enjoy the work.
• Strong conflict resolution and problem solving skills with a focus on constructive and positive conflict resolution.
• Collaborative mindset, with experience working cross-functionally using techniques like Scrum, Kanban.
• Passion for talent development and continuous learning, with a focus on creating a culture of growth and development for all team members.

Experience

2022 - now

company: Fairmoney (fairmoney.io)

position: Senior Engineering manager

Summary Fairmoney, a French-based FINTECH company, is actively expanding in emerging markets, particularly in India and Nigeria. The firm specializes in developing innovative financial products and services.

Technical Experience

Product division I

• Led the conceptualization and development of a new savings product, aligning with market needs and regulatory standards.
• Worked in collaboration with marketing and business teams for product launch and promotion.
• Managed technical performance, security, and user engagement aspects of the product.
• Product managed to successfully attract growth, amounting to hundreds millions of nairas within six months.

Product division II

• Transitioned to a leadership role in the loan product division, overseeing strategic project management and aligning initiatives with business objectives.
• Developed an advanced loan collection system, efficiently handling over 2 million loans daily, demonstrating scalability and operational stability.
• Launched a new lending funnel platform within a challenging eight-month period, effectively processing 30,000 loans on a new mobile platform in less than six months.
• Implemented an upgraded, flexible version of the collection engine for the new platform, enhancing performance and adaptability.
• Provided critical feedback and strategic guidance to business divisions, influencing new initiatives and enhancing delivery outcomes.
• Involved in technical analysis and design within the team, ensuring the delivery of innovative and robust solutions.
• Upheld high standards in SDLC, development practices, and infrastructure.
• Championed the shift towards a distributed systems approach, improving operational efficiency and service delivery.
• Fostered a culture of continuous learning and improvement, enhancing team skills and encouraging knowledge sharing.

2021 - 2022

company: Geekbrains (geekbrains.ru)

position: Department Technical Lead

Summary

Geekbrains is one of the top Russian educational platforms offering custom programs and courses on broad range of specialities.

Technical

8-year-old project with lots of legacy code and subsystems.

My role was to provide guidance and execution for the scalability of the application and the maintenance of low TTM.

Transforming the monolithic approach to a more agile distributed form using SOA methodology was one of the key objectives.

I worked on the following:

1. Management and recruitment of a small team of back-end engineers for the project.
2. Manage the functions and tasks of the core application.
3. Provide advice and guidance to clusters of neighbouring teams.
4. Design of a next-generation SOA approach for an entire business grid.

2021 - 2022

company: Miple (miple.io) [now defunct]

position: Co-Founder, CTO

Summary

Miple provides an essential set of tools for influencers and experts, helping them to share their expertise and knowledge with a wide range of audiences.

All in one place:

• Acquisition and transfer of payments
• Communication hub
• Integrations with marketing
• Customised scheduling and alerting

Technical

Miple is built using Kubernetes, PostgreSQL, Redis and Clickhouse on top of the Rails6 stack, making use of various external SaaS and custom-built solutions. With distributed functionality in mind, Miple is architected with separate domains and separate functional applications. These are organised in scalable pipelines.

2020 - 2021

company: Joost (joost.chat) [now defunct]

position: Co-Founder, CTO

Summary

Joost is a communication platform primarily for e-commerce businesses, helping them to interact with their customers in times of pandemic, when real face-to-face interaction is hard to come by. We bring customers and merchants together in a more conventional way at a time when more and more people are doing their shopping and buying online.

Technical

Joost was started with a small team, having only 3 developers to start with. My role was to build all of the back-end systems and the infrastructure underneath them. The technologies in use have been a variety of things:

1. K8S for the orchestration and deployment of applications
2. Clickhouse for the analysis and reporting
3. A bespoke WebRTC backbone
4. Media storage backbone using underlying S3-compatible system
5. Distributed notification system allowing us to easily connect new notification protocols (such as APN/FCM push notifications, emails, messengers).

2017 - 2021

company: Rocketbank (rocketbank.ru) [now defunct]

position: Principle software developer

Summary

Rocketbank is a client-oriented banking service which is utilizing some of the underlying classical bank infrastructure providing user experience to clients through a mobile application. The main goal is to provide user experience and banking services to clients without the need for personal bank office visits or other conventional communication channels.

Technical

My main responsibility was building up a back-office management subsystem through which clients were able to communicate and resolve their issues. Our main application was the RoR backend(which was built from the ground up aside from the main existing monolith application aggregating all the functionality) for the React Native front application.

Production started in April 2017 and went into alpha-testing and production use in early autumn of 2017. Since the start, I was responsible for the architecture and overall design of backend systems.

Our main backend web stack consisted of rails5, PostgreSQL, Redis, sidekiq, sneakers. With rest-based communication with clients and REST/MQ communication with other services and subsystems.

Apart from that, there were a couple of minor applications written in ruby and elixir which helped to expand available functionality for the core system.

Since the start, I was a single backend developer at our projects but at the end of 2017 we started looking further into expanding the team, till the end of 2018 I was managing 2 more backend developers, then in 2019, I’ve moved further to overlook technically whole development team as well as managing new projects and creating teams for them.

2016 - 2017

company: Sourcelab Technology

position: Software developer

Summary

SourceLab was an outsourcing company working on a per-project basis. For the time being(about 6-7 months before the company going defunct) I was working on refactoring and maintaining of few legacy projects and the development of new projects from the ground up.

We were using SCRUM methodology there with usual pre-day quick meetings, sprint retros, velocity tracking.

Technical

Most of the new projects were based on rails4 stack using MySQL as data engine, with a couple of legacy rails2/rails3 projects that needed upgrading and refactoring.

2015 - 2016

company: Social Quantum

position: Software developer

Summary

The main project in Social Quantum was the development of an internal ERP system for in-house use. The system consisted of multiple parts and modules covering all the aspects of the company lifecycle, including accounting, human resources, CRM integrations, financial planning, and reporting. My presence in the company concurred with the global redesign of those systems so I took part in both backend and frontend development. Blocks that are worth mentioning comprise working on analytics and reporting tools (mostly big aggregations on data engine part), software design of accounting, and financial submodules.

Technical

System stack consisted of well-written and maintained rails4 applications with a huge focus on specs and tests (both unit and integrational), rationalized and mature feature designs, frequent code reviews, and pair development PostgreSQL/Redis/Memcache was used as data storage. Bootstrap/Jquery/Native js/SCSS/template engines on the front part.

2014 - 2015

company: Scade

position: Software developer

Summary

Scade was a tinder-alike dating application that was born in the early 2010-s and lived through at least 2 rewrites before I was among the new team which took development. My task was to provide a new backend for rewritten front application(that was developed on Closure), aside from this I was responsible for creating a new communication service(written on go) liable for WebSocket connections with clients, which should’ve replaced the old NodeJS application that was experiencing load difficulties. The application was developed on top of the existing rails4 application with the grape as interface framework.

2010 - 2014

company: Mediapress

position: IT Consulter

Summary

I was the part of IT team which was responsible for internal tools and instruments. One of my main goals there was creating a ticket system for inventorial requests/tasks. That application was developed on top of Redmine, heavily customized, and extended. Apart from that, many minor projects and applications helped to ease the company’s lifecycle. The application was mostly written in python and ruby, using rails and Django.

Education

1. MEPHI (Moscow Engineering Physics Institute), Natalia Nesterova Moscow Academy. Graduated in 2008 with a master’s degree in “Industrial Control Systems” or ASUP as it’s called here.