Work Experience
Consulting (CTO, Tech Lead, Architect)
Independent Project Activity
LAB IT LLC — Technical Director (CTO) (May 2025 - October 2025)
- Implemented a new framework, optimizing the development cycle by 40%.
- Resolved an issue with GitLab infrastructure by deploying a custom version.
- Conducted a process audit and implemented CI/CD, Code Review, and task tracking (YouGile), which reduced integration by 90%.
- Participated in personnel selection and audit, assisted in preparing project proposals and estimates.
Fusion HVACR & Appliance Repair — Independent Developer, Auditor (September 2025 - December 2025)
- Conducted an audit of React components and provided architectural recommendations.
- Configured Make.com scripts (Twilio → Slack integration with business logic).
- Developed a highly specialized application using the Govee API.
Tommy Pollina, Landscape Company, Inc. — Automation Engineer (October 2025 - January 2026)
- Created data transfer scripts from Workyard to Monday (increased efficiency by 500%).
- Configured expense accounting via the Plaid API and Capital One.
- Developed an estimate generation process using OCR and LLM, fully automating the initial calculation.
Software Developer & Lecturer
Chaikovsky Industrial College
- Teaching & Education: Core lecturer for "Algorithmization and Programming," as well as Professional Development (CPD) and Vocational Training courses. Effectively manage diverse groups (ages 16–50), tailoring pedagogical approaches to the audience.
- AI Mentorship: Provide individual mentorship to students, guiding them to become ML Engineers and Generative AI specialists. Actively promote Deep Learning and Information Security disciplines.
- Administrative Leadership & Advocacy: Drive administrative changes and champion the integration of AI in education. Successfully represented the college administration’s "pro-AI" stance in debates, securing the roadmap for AI implementation.
- Digital Transformation: Achieved a 2–3x increase in student productivity by migrating workflows from paper-based formats to fully digital environments.
- IT Architecture: Serve as the System Architect for the college's IT infrastructure; design and scale internal services, develop curricula, and manage budgeting/planning.
- Software Engineering & Metrics:
- Developed "Proekteka.CHIKA" (Project Management System), increasing student efficiency by 30–40% and administrative staff efficiency by ~5% per person.
- Engineered automated systems for student certificate tracking and faculty bonus calculations, creating a centralized achievement database and accelerating data processing.
CTO & Co-founder (part-time)
MYI Technologies
- Strategic Leadership: Co-founded and scaled an international IT company serving dozens of clients across various industries. Led a team of 4 developers, focusing on mentorship and professional growth.
- Architecture & DevOps: Lead system architect and DevOps engineer. Manage infrastructure (~5 servers), implementing self-healing systems, process monitoring, and centralized logging (Elasticsearch).
- Business Impact: Developed and integrated internal CRM and automated reporting tools, resulting in client efficiency gains ranging from 36% to 500%.
- SaaS Development: Orchestrated the development of internal SaaS products for thousands of users, featuring automated payroll and project management modules.
Selected Projects & Technical Expertise:
- AI Integrations: Developed NLP/LLM solutions using RAG; built a multi-provider AI gateway (Gemini/OpenAI/Mistral/Claude) with fallback mechanisms; created custom ComfyUI nodes and integrated LoRA models for Stable Diffusion.
- Infrastructure & Backend:
- Django: Advanced usage of DRF with ViewSets, polymorphic architectures, and complex relational databases. Systematic debugging of signals and migrations.
- Microservices: Implemented SOA/ESB architectures using RabbitMQ for inter-service communication; secret management via HashiCorp Vault; monitoring via Prometheus + Grafana.
- Docker: Expert in multi-container orchestration, volume mounting for hot-reload, and production environment optimization.
- Business Automation: Lead-parsing for UK Real Estate, accounting automation for Omega Finance (Serbia), and specialized logistics tools for China-based operations.
Web Developer & DevOps (project-based)
FC "Vortex"
- Participated in project work with an engagement of 4-5 hours per week, outside of main activities.
- Development and support of the club's official website and online platform (Python/Django).
- Architecture design, UI/UX design, implementation of frontend and backend.
- Server setup and administration (Nginx, Gunicorn), Cloudflare, mail server.
Developer Engineer Team Lead & Tester Team Lead
RetailBox Inc.
- Started as a Developer Engineer, later promoted to Team Lead.
- Led a development team (2 people) and a testing team (2 people).
- Automation: Designed and implemented scenarios on Make.com, integrations via API (CRM, messengers). Implemented AI solutions for call processing.
- Web Development: Created Django applications (WebSockets, microservices), online games (Telegram/Web), and maintained WordPress projects.
- Testing: Reduced testing time by 12% through process optimization.
- Cloud Infrastructure: Worked with AWS (Amplify, EC2, Route 53).
- Stack: Python (Django, aiohttp), JS/TS, Vue.js, SuiteScript, Node.js, MySQL/MariaDB, AWS, Linux, Git.
Full-Stack Developer / DevOps Engineer
Private Practice and Consulting (Sole Proprietor / Freelance)
- Conducted comprehensive project activities as a sole proprietor and freelancer, solving a wide range of tasks for clients in retail, consulting, media, and other sectors.
- Business Process and CRM Automation: Designed and implemented workflows for automatic order processing, data synchronization, and marketing campaigns.
- Integrated key services: UPS, Shopify, Monday.com, Freshworks CRM, using Make.com and custom scripts on Google Apps Script.
- Backend and DevOps Development: Developed asynchronous Telegram/VK bots with payment system integration. Deployed and administered high-performance web servers and mail systems on AWS.
Projects
AI-Integrated Voice Bot for Calls
A system for automating inbound and outbound calls using speech synthesis and recognition, along with advanced AI-driven logic.
Diploma Project: Self-Healing Infrastructure
(Subject to NDA)
Developed as a commissioned project for a corporate client. Specific technical details and internal logic are confidential under a Non-Disclosure Agreement.
- Concept: Designed a meta-orchestrator for lifecycle management and automated recovery of IT services across heterogeneous environments.
- Architecture: Implemented a decoupled architecture consisting of a central coordination node (Brain via Django) and distributed execution agents (Hands via Python microservices).
- Features: Built a three-tier recovery model, ranging from reactive service restarts to intelligent root-cause analysis using AI (LLM) integrations.
- Security: Integration with HashiCorp Vault for secure secret management (zero secrets in DB) and end-to-end operation tracing via OpenTelemetry.
- Tech Stack: Python, Django, RabbitMQ, gRPC, PostgreSQL, Redis, Elasticsearch, Docker/Kubernetes API, Cloud SDKs.
Projecteka.CHIK
A program for managing student projects, specifically designed for the administration of the Chaikovsky Industrial College.
Rabota.CHIK (Work.CHIK)
A platform to facilitate student employment and assist the college's partner companies in finding candidates.
Aktiv.CHIK (Activity.CHIK)
Software for managing and tracking students' competitive activities and achievements.
ResumeSTRV
A tool for creating resumes and recommendations based on provided context, featuring evaluation and analysis functions.
Merge The Chaos
A Jira alternative with activity tracking system integration to centralize all work-related data and processes in one place.
Taxi Nyandoma
A multi-city bot for passengers to find taxis and for drivers to find passengers.
ACADEMIC PROJECT: Text and Face Recognition Bot & Website
A fully functional project created during the first year of college (before the ChatGPT hype) for recognizing faces and text in photos using OCR.
Chronos Aura
A comprehensive system (desktop + web) for tracking time spent on clients, managing employee salaries, and implementing time management techniques like the Pomodoro Method.
Recommendations
"Yakov is the kind of team lead who makes work not only productive but also genuinely comfortable. He always keeps the team focused, knows how to listen, and provides support and motivation. Thanks to his ability to delegate tasks effectively and find solutions quickly in complex situations, we successfully handled challenging projects multiple times. He doesn't just manage processes; he is genuinely involved in the work and always ready to help if something is 'on fire.' Yakov is incredibly understanding when it matters. Working under his leadership is a pleasure. I definitely recommend him!"
"Yakov is a highly communicative and empathetic individual who consistently demonstrates kindness and a genuine willingness to assist others. His approachable nature and readiness to help make him an invaluable team member and a pleasure to work with."
About Me
About Me
A proactive IT specialist with a unique and accelerated career path. I started my commercial activities at the age of 15 as a freelancer, which allowed me to gain deep practical experience even before completing my studies. Thanks to high self-organization, discipline, and the ability to quickly master new technologies, I effectively combine my studies at college (where I am the top student in my department and an algorithmics instructor) with intensive project work and leadership positions. I am passionate about complex architectural challenges, from web services in Python to low-level optimization in Rust and Assembler. I am equally effective working both in a team and independently, always striving for a quality result.
Passion for IT
I am deeply passionate about the IT field, not only in my professional activities but also as a hobby. In addition to development, I am interested in electronics and system administration: I enjoy configuring DNS records, setting up mail servers, and performing computer maintenance. This helps me expand my technical skills and stay current with modern technologies.
Communication Skills
Many believe that such deep technical immersion often comes with weak communication skills, but my situation is the opposite. From a young age, I was involved in a theater studio, where I developed public speaking and oratory skills. This enables me to explain even complex technical aspects in an accessible way, including to people with zero prior knowledge.
Teaching and Mentorship
I enjoy sharing knowledge, helping team members, and training colleagues. I have successful experience motivating and teaching children (from 7 to 15 years old) the basics of IT, and I work even more effectively with adults. Training, conducting workshops, and writing articles are all part of my repertoire.
Additional Information
Russian — Native English — B2 (Upper-Intermediate) Serbian — A2 (Elementary)
Open Source
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Django Proxy Pass
A Django-based Proxy-Pass application for accessing a local network after user authentication.
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Django Bind Active
A Django-based controller for managing the BIND9 DNS server.
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Assembly on Python
A project to integrate assembly language into Python using Rust and Maturin as intermediate tools.
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Comfy API Simplified
Contributed minor bug fixes to a library for making API requests to ComfyUI.
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Comfy HTTP Request
Fixed minor bugs in a library for making HTTP requests to external resources for ComfyUI.
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Console CAD
A command-line console CAD system with output in DXF format.
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Rust Binder for Python
Optimizing file read, write, and edit operations in Python using Rust to enhance performance.
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Django ST Checker
An application for managing security in enterprises with a monolithic architecture, generating reports compliant with legislation.
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FromVK to TG
A crawler for collecting data from VKontakte groups and publishing it to Telegram channels.
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Time Recorder
A tool for Keenetic devices to track employee attendance at enterprises.
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Script for fast quantization SDXL models for 16 channel latent
Active
A script for fast quantization of SDXL models with 16-channel latent. This is an experimental repository, as 16-channel SDXL models are currently in alpha stages and lack stability or industry-wide unification.
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ComfyUI 16-channel Model Loader
Active
A fork of NeuroSenko/ComfyUI-SDXL-16ch-loader that enables support for loading quantized GGUF SDXL models with 16-channel latent within the ComfyUI environment.
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AI on ComfyUI
Active
A set of custom nodes for sending requests to various popular AI models via their standard APIs. It includes access to several free services, providing an alternative to the typically paid built-in ComfyUI nodes
Education
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Vocational Education, Network and System Administration
Chaikovsky Industrial College (2026)
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Continuing Education, Programmer, Programming
Chaikovsky Industrial College (2026)
Hackathons
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Kiro World Hackathon - Participant
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World's Largest Hackathon - Participant
Certifications & Awards
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VIII Interregional Methodological Conference (2025)