# Svyatoslav Demochkin
**Head of Engineering**
Moscow · Remote, open to business trips · svyat.dema@yandex.ru
[LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/svyat-dema/) · [hh.ru](https://hh.ru/resume/f9dc3a3eff0cd461720039ed1f786d4c384275) · [Habr Career](https://career.habr.com/svyatoslav-demochkin) · [Telegram](https://t.me/kusokBanana)

## Summary

Engineering manager with 10+ years in tech and 3+ years leading teams. Built the frontend function at Positive Technologies from scratch to an 11-person department (4 cross-functional teams). Previously at Yandex and VK. I combine strategy, process and hands-on development in React / Angular / TypeScript. Formerly a full-stack developer — I can take on backend when needed (Python, PHP, Node.js). I bring AI-assisted development into team workflows — sped up delivery by 1.5×.

## Key results

- **Scaled the department from 0 to 11 people in a year** — built an architecture of 4 cross-functional teams (lead + frontend engineers + designer); ran all hiring myself, externally and via internal rotation.
- **Zero voluntary attrition over 2 years** — amid company turbulence (budget cuts, mass layoffs).
- **Grew people via individual development plans**: 3 to senior engineers/designers, 3 to team leads.
- **Sped up delivery 1.5×** — introduced AI tooling (Claude) into team workflows.
- **Multiple releases per day** in VK's high-load fintech — introduced feature flags with selective rollout to user segments.
- **Cut release prep from 2 hours to 10 minutes** — automation via scripts and CI/CD.
- **Reduced visual bugs from 5–10 to 0–1 per release** — introduced a design-review process.
- **Cut the cost of building emails** — from “designer + developer, ~a week” to “one developer, a couple of hours”.
- **2× faster page loads** — initiated and drove a frontend build optimisation with the team.

## Experience

### Head of UI Development (Engineering Manager) — [Positive Technologies](https://www.ptsecurity.com)
*2024-03 — present · Moscow · Remote · cybersecurity*
Frontend function across the IT directorate's products. Led 4 cross-functional teams: tech leads, frontend engineers and UX/UI designers. Full ownership of the function — from strategy and hiring to technical decisions and user outcomes. Acted as the owner of the UI domain, balancing business, user and team interests.

**Products**
- Led the full UI lifecycle — from low-fidelity prototypes to production release and ongoing evolution.
- Owned UIs for: Corporate Portal, Partner Portal, Aim (infrastructure-management automation), Preboarding (hiring and onboarding) and several smaller products.
- Ensured stable delivery of UI solutions for products with an active user base.

**Teams & process**
- Built the frontend function from scratch: hiring, onboarding, ownership areas, strategy; scaled the department from 0 to 11 people in a year.
- Inherited existing teams: introduced process, improved manageability and transparency, built trust and working relationships.
- Fully replaced a product's team with a seamless migration to a modern-stack UI — without pausing product development.
- Introduced a design-review process — visual bugs dropped from a steady 5–10 to 0–1 per release.
- Reworked the email-building process — from "designer + developer, ~a week" to one developer in a couple of hours.

**People**
- Grew the team via individual development plans: 3 people reached Senior, 3 became leads.
- Kept the department with zero voluntary attrition over 2 years amid company turbulence (budget cuts, mass layoffs); the only losses were part of company-wide reductions.
- Increased team autonomy and reduced the bus factor — lowered dependence on individual specialists.
- Made hard management calls, including parting with team members during team optimisation.

**Technology & hands-on**
- Introduced AI-assisted development (Claude and similar) — sped up delivery ~1.5× across prototyping, refactoring, coding and code review.
- Added llms.txt support to the component library — machine-readable docs for LLM tools, so AI assistants use components correctly out of the box without manual context.
- Contributed hands-on to key UI parts in React and Angular — targeted work in complex, critical areas.
- Shaped architectural decisions and ran code reviews; strong in frontend architecture and UI development standards.
- Automated internal processes and tooling in Python — scripts, helper services, routine-operation optimisation.

**Frontend infra & FrontOps**
- Designed and evolved the team's frontend infrastructure.
- Automated the release cycle (scripts + CI/CD) — release prep dropped from 2 hours to 10 minutes.
- Introduced fully automated package build and publish (push → merge → release) — with zero manual steps.
- Organised frontend build optimisation — page loads became 2× faster.
- Improved release stability and delivery predictability, reduced operational load on teams.

Stack: React, Angular, TypeScript, Python, GitLab CI, Jira, Figma

### Team Lead — [VK](https://vk.company/ru/)
*2023-04 — 2023-12 · Moscow · remote*
VK fintech — Cashout: a full self-service money-withdrawal product where creators pick a monetisation earnings source on the VKontakte social network and cash out the amount they want. A high-load service within the VK ecosystem. Promoted from senior frontend developer.
- Led a cross-functional development team (4 engineers) and the Cashout product.
- Drove the product core — self-service withdrawal: a creator picks an earnings source and cashes out the amount they need; alongside it, earnings analytics and related features.
- Service scale: tens of thousands of creators and payouts of tens of millions of rubles per month.
- Planned and delivered product integrations and improvements.
- Built collaboration across adjacent departments — QA, design, analytics, marketing & PR, editorial, document flow, legal — for service resilience, UX quality, growth-metric tracking, customer acquisition and correct payouts to self-employed individuals, sole proprietors and legal entities.
- Integrated adjacent departments to automate routine processes.
- Ran 1:1s and performance reviews, set goals and growth areas for the team.
- Hands-on development of VK fintech UIs and the Cashout service.

Stack: TypeScript, React

### Senior Frontend Developer — [VK](https://vk.company/ru/)
*2022-08 — 2023-04 · Moscow · hybrid*
- Built high-load VK fintech UIs — a product inside one of the largest social networks in the region (~100M MAU).
- Worked under high load: significant traffic and data volumes, with elevated client-side stability, performance and resilience requirements.
- Introduced feature flags: multiple releases per day and selective rollout of functionality to specific user segments.
- Built the Cashout service UI.

Stack: TypeScript, React

### Fullstack Developer — [Яндекс](https://yandex.ru)
*2018-12 — 2022-05 · Moscow*
Team building automation and management tooling for data-centre IT infrastructure.
- Built and grew a UI component library: migrated most of the team's projects to it, multiplying the speed of new UI development.
- Mentored colleagues in backend and frontend development.
- Acted as product owner for several products — growth and support.
- Wrote external and internal operations documentation for services.
- Extended and maintained the server ordering and provisioning platform for company services.
- Built a service for assembling, disassembling and re-assembling equipment (server components, self-driving-car parts, etc.).
- Built an equipment-repair platform — full cycle from request to receiving repaired hardware from the service centre.
- Built a UI for fulfilling data-centre work orders (component and server replacement).
- Built a technical asset-tracking system for the company's physical assets.
- Built a UI for automated inventory of server-hardware manufacturing at the factory.
- Built a service for transactional equipment-state changes across inventory and quantity-accounting systems.
- Built a procurement/manufacturing ordering service: from a minimal required configuration it selects the most cost-optimal hardware.

Stack: TypeScript, React, Angular, Python, Flask, PHP, Symfony, PostgreSQL, MySQL, Oracle, MongoDB, Redis, Memcached, Docker

### Developer — [Kodix](https://kodix.ru)
*2017-08 — 2018-12 · Moscow*
- Built and maintained a unified platform for car-dealer websites: delivering features, updates and content from a control centre to all dealer sites; keeping them aligned with the brand site in look, catalogue and pricing. Stack: PHP 5.6–7.0, 1C-Bitrix, jQuery.
- Built a car-configuration selector by key factors with price prediction and Unity-based 3D visualisation. Stack: PHP 5.6–7.0, 1C-Bitrix, jQuery.
- Built a personal-car valuation service from parameters based on comparable auto.ru listings; microservice architecture. Stack: PHP 7.0, Lumen, Redis, jQuery, Codeception.
- Built an internal UI for automated deploy and server management (prod/test/dev) with configurable specs; Ansible API integration. Stack: Python (Flask), JS (jQuery).
- Built an MVP mobile web app for a service-station engineer: car intake report with cost, urgency and other fields. Stack: PHP (Laravel), JS (Vue.js).

Stack: PHP, 1C-Bitrix, Lumen, Laravel, Vue.js, jQuery, Python, Flask, Redis

### Web Developer — Фриланс / прямой заказчик («Европолы»)
*2017-03 — 2017-08 · Moscow*
- Built an internal inventory and warehousing system for Evropoly, including a custom access-control system; deep table-visualisation customisation with DataTables.js. Stack: PHP 5.6 (custom ORM wrapper), jQuery, MySQL.
- Built a parquet e-commerce store: an SEO manager for product ranking via dynamic rules on product attributes; warehouse and product-attribute management. Stack: PHP 5.6, Yii2, jQuery, Bootstrap, MySQL.

Stack: PHP, Yii2, jQuery, Bootstrap, MySQL

### Web Developer — [Givemesite](https://givemesite.ru)
*2016-06 — 2017-03 · Moscow*
- Built e-commerce stores and a tool for automating bid management in Yandex.Direct.

Stack: PHP, 1C-Bitrix, Yii, Yii2, MySQL, HTML5, SCSS, JavaScript, jQuery

## Skills

- **Management:** hiring, individual development plans, 1:1s, OKR / roadmap, Agile / Scrum, process design, stakeholder management, cross-functional collaboration, change management
- **Technology:** TypeScript, React, Angular, Node.js, CI/CD (GitLab CI), Docker, Figma
- **Frontend expertise:** frontend architecture, high-load UIs, design systems, FrontOps
- **AI / efficiency:** LLM-assisted development (Claude, Cursor), automation of routine operations
- **Earlier:** Python / Flask / SQLAlchemy, PHP / Symfony / Laravel / Yii2, SQL (PostgreSQL, MySQL, Oracle, ...), NoSQL (MongoDB, Redis, ...), Linux

## Languages

- **Russian** — native
- **English** — B2 (upper-intermediate)

## Education

- **National Research Nuclear University MEPhI, Moscow** — BSc, Business Informatics (Faculty of Management and Economics of High Technologies) (2017)