Engineering leader who turns growing teams into delivery systems that scale
13+ years from backend systems to CTO. I build the organizational layer—hiring, ownership, architecture committees, delivery rituals—that lets product companies ship predictably without trading away reliability. I stay close to the code throughout.
Proof at a glance
- 13+
- years in engineering
- 1 year
- Backend Engineer to Head of Development at Worki
- 3 → 30
- fintech unit scaled at Uzum
- 2 of 4
- team leads grown into independent owners
- 40k+
- cards issued through tooling I built
- CTO
- AI-native B2B SaaS at Deeplens
Selected leadership experience
Roles where the job was not just to write software, but to create the team and operating system around it.
Led engineering for an AI-native B2B SaaS product that turns customer feedback and public reviews into structured product insight.
- Owned the full cycle: product discovery, architecture, delivery, demo environments, and integration with live client data.
- Built a client-facing TUI that lets users talk to their data conversationally—from concept to working product with real customers.
- Introduced an LLM quality loop—prompt regression cases, output benchmarks, and automated review cycles—that made AI iteration faster and safer.
- Embedded AI into both the development process and the end-user product experience.
Scaled a cross-functional fintech unit from 3 to 30 people without losing accountability or delivery speed.
- Built hiring, onboarding, delivery rituals, and an architectural committee—distributing technical decision-making across the unit.
- Grew two of four team leads into independent team owners who now run their own teams without escalation.
- Built bank-operations and card-issuance tooling with zero tolerance for failure: 40,000+ cards issued through systems I designed.
- Created an AI-assisted internal knowledge base that evolved from static docs into a live tool for both customer care and engineering teams.
Promoted from individual contributor to Head of Development in one year; built the engineering org from scratch to 11–20 people.
- Established hiring, 1:1s, 360 reviews, performance cycles, and explicit technical ownership across the team.
- Designed a flexible monetization system with self-serve B2B integrations that unlocked new revenue streams.
- Owned infrastructure reliability for hundreds of thousands of users: service rewrites, NATS/ClickHouse optimization, prerender.io scaling.
- Made technical contributions that outlived the role: custom NATS clients for Ruby and Elixir, an open-source ClickHouse package.
Backend systems, Rails, Python, Django, Flask, React, Unity3D, ML prototypes, startup product work, and international consulting (SVI / Silicon Valley Internship).
How I make engineering scale
I build clarity, ownership, and feedback loops into how teams work—not as process theater, but as leverage for delivery. Learned by doing it at each stage of scale.
- Clarify directionMake priorities, constraints, decisions, and delivery risks visible—so engineers solve the right problems without asking twice.
- Build strong teamsHire deliberately, onboard fast, grow engineers toward ownership, and develop the next layer of leaders before you need them.
- Design ownershipCreate clear boundaries so teams can make decisions and own outcomes without constant escalation or coordination overhead.
- Deliver consistentlyPut the right planning, review, incident-learning, and quality gates in place—matched to the actual risk of the product, not cargo-culted from somewhere else.
- Connect the businessKeep engineering in the same conversation as product, analytics, operations, and customer reality—not downstream of it.
Technical depth that supports leadership
I can move from roadmap and org design into architecture and implementation detail when the decision requires it.
Backend & systems
Ruby, Rails, Elixir, Python, JavaScript, GraphQL, APIs, service architecture
Data & infrastructure
PostgreSQL, Redis, ClickHouse, NATS, Docker, AWS, observability, reliability
AI-enabled products
LLM pipelines, RAG, quality evaluation, regression testing, internal tooling
Engineering practice
Architecture review, delivery systems, incident learning, documentation, knowledge workflows
Where I create the most value
Companies with real product traction that need to scale the engineering organization—or fix delivery without rebuilding the team from scratch.
- Head of EngineeringOwn engineering strategy, org design, and execution. Best fit: 20–100 engineers, multiple teams, product-market fit already established.
- Engineering Manager / Senior EMBuild accountable teams with predictable delivery and clear ownership models.
- Unit Tech Lead / Direction LeadAlign architecture, cross-functional ownership, and delivery in a fintech or product vertical.
- CTO (early or scaling stage)Build the technical foundation, engineering org, and AI-native product practices together from the start.
- Fractional CTO / AdvisoryShort-term engagement: technical audit, team assessment, delivery recovery, AI adoption roadmap.
Need an engineering organization that can scale with the product?
Let’s discuss the team, the constraints, and the outcome you need.
Head of Engineering · Unit Lead · CTO
Igor Pavlov
Engineering leader for product, platform, and AI-enabled teams
Engineering leader with 13+ years in backend systems, infrastructure, and team leadership. Promoted from Backend Engineer to Head of Development in one year at Worki; scaled a fintech unit from 3 to 30 people at Uzum; built AI-native product and engineering practices as CTO at Deeplens. I stay technically deep while building the org layer that lets teams ship predictably.
Leadership experience
Deeplens
Chief Technical Officer · 2025–2026- Led engineering for an AI-native B2B SaaS product—customer feedback and public reviews turned into actionable product insight.
- Built a client-facing TUI: users talk to their data conversationally. Owned full cycle from discovery to live demo with client data.
- Introduced LLM quality loop: prompt regression, output benchmarks, automated review cycles for safer AI iteration.
Uzum · Tashkent
Team Leader / Unit Tech Leader · 2022–2025- Scaled a cross-functional fintech unit from 3 to 30 across engineering, analytics, and operations.
- Grew 2 of 4 team leads into independent owners; introduced architectural committee to distribute decisions.
- Built bank-operations and card-issuance tooling with zero failure tolerance: 40,000+ cards issued.
Worki / VK Rabota · Moscow
Back-end Engineer → Head of Development · 2018–2022- Promoted to Head of Development in one year; built engineering org from scratch to 11–20 people.
- Introduced 1:1s, 360 reviews, performance cycles, and explicit ownership models.
- Owned reliability for hundreds of thousands of users; built flexible self-serve B2B monetization.
Earlier engineering foundation
2011–2018Backend, Rails, Python, Django, Flask, React, Unity3D, ML prototypes, startup products, international consulting.