About

I’m an Engineering Manager who stays in the code. I lead two teams - 10 engineers - building AI-powered products at an edtech platform that serves millions of students. I report to the CTO and operate at the intersection of product strategy, technical architecture, and team building.

What I do

I join product discovery at the beginning, not the handoff. By the time my team writes code, we already know what success looks like and how we’ll measure it. I think in user journeys and business metrics, not ticket velocity.

My teams ship LLM-powered features with zero PII exposure, consolidate microservice architectures without production incidents, and coordinate cross-org initiatives spanning 6+ teams - without dedicated program management.

What I’m building

I’m driving spec-driven development across our engineering org - an AI-native methodology where comprehensive specifications become the single source of truth, consumable by both humans and LLM coding agents. Early results show ~50% faster implementation. But the real unlock isn’t speed - it’s catching requirement conflicts before anyone writes a line of code.

How I lead

I measure teams, not individuals. Public praise, private coaching. The only thing I require from every engineer is engagement - if you engage with feedback, every problem has a solution.

The best features on my teams don’t come from the roadmap. They come from engineers who see a problem, have the space to experiment, and ship it. My job is to create that culture.

Key accomplishments

  • Led LLM-powered feature delivery (OpenAI, Gemini) that reached top-tier adoption within weeks - zero PII exposure, with an evaluation framework built from scratch with content experts
  • Consolidated ~12 microservices into a single monolith with zero production incidents - from zero observability to comprehensive monitoring
  • Coordinated a cross-org initiative spanning 6+ teams that secured a major district renewal - direct revenue impact
  • Drove spec-driven development adoption, securing buy-in from senior product leadership - versioned specs as single source of truth
  • Developed an IC into Tech Lead through deliberate stretch assignments and the epic captain model

My approach

My thinking is shaped by Cagan’s product discovery, Evans’ domain-driven design, and a deep belief that everything in architecture is a trade-off. I read across product, architecture, delivery, and leadership - and it shows up in how I run teams.

I don’t believe in dogma. SOLID, DRY, TDD - all valuable defaults that can be broken for good reason. The skill is knowing when.

The human stuff

When I’m not leading engineering teams, I’m trail running somewhere with bad cell service. Ukrainian immigrant. I recharge outdoors and think on trails.

Let’s talk - [email protected] or find me on LinkedIn.