I build products and systems, and lead engineering teams. My background is in search and distributed systems, though the problems I take on often lead me beyond them.
I like figuring out what is worth building and taking it through to something people can use. That involves making decisions with incomplete information, testing ideas, and being willing to change direction as I learn.
I pay attention to how much effort things take to live with. A recurring task that keeps consuming attention is worth fixing. So is a system that makes every change harder than it needs to be. I’m interested in tools and ways of working that let people take on more without adding the same amount of overhead. When designing systems, I think about what they will take to operate and develop over time.
Currently, I’m Head of Engineering at Yandex. I lead teams working on search quality, data pipelines, and event-driven systems, and work closely with product and ML teams on technical direction and delivery.
As a lead, I focus on making goals and trade-offs clear enough for engineers to make decisions independently. Hiring and mentoring are part of that work, along with giving people ownership and helping them understand how their decisions affect the product.