Question 1

Are you open to relocation?

Accepted Answer

Based in Chemnitz, Germany. Open to roles across Germany, the EU, UK, US, UAE, Canada, Singapore, Japan, South Korea, and Australia — remote-first works too.

Question 2

What languages do you speak?

Accepted Answer

English (fluent), German (B2), Russian (native).

Question 3

What's your notice period?

Accepted Answer

One month, at my current role with Infineon Technologies.

Question 4

Are you open to contract or freelance work?

Accepted Answer

Open to full-time contract roles. For freelance work, only through an intermediary/EOR platform like remozo.com.

Question 5

What are your long-term career goals?

Accepted Answer

I'm working toward German citizenship, so I'm looking for a stable role I can grow in over the next 5 years — ideally at the intersection of distributed systems and AI.

Question 6

What's your greatest professional achievement?

Accepted Answer

Building Infineon's Parking Guidance System from the ground up — backend, frontend, and the embedded computer vision — replacing a paid vendor and now serving 8,000 users.

Question 7

What motivates you to perform well at work?

Accepted Answer

Building things that create measurable impact, plus a genuine love of technology — it's what got me into engineering in the first place.

Question 8

How do you stay current with industry trends?

Accepted Answer

Hands-on experimentation — I hold Anthropic certifications in the Claude API/SDK and Claude Code, and I write the occasional article (the last one hit 5K+ views across Habr, Dev, and Medium).

Question 9

Can you give an example of working as part of a team to achieve a goal?

Accepted Answer

Leading a 3-person team on the NCahoots admin app at WeDo.agency — I introduced React and set up linting, formatting, and pre-commit hooks to keep quality consistent across the team.

Question 10

What do you consider the most important qualities for success?

Accepted Answer

Speed — shipping fast and iterating matters more today than getting the design perfect upfront.

Question 11

What are your salary expectations?

Accepted Answer

Currently targeting €50–70K/year, which also covers the EU Blue Card salary threshold.

Question 12

Can you work directly with a non-technical founder?

Accepted Answer

Yes — at WeDo.agency I shipped 9 startup projects working directly with founders, translating business goals into technical scope.

Question 13

How do you scope an MVP?

Accepted Answer

I focus on the smallest slice that proves the business hypothesis, then iterate — happy to walk through trade-offs openly.

Question 14

Are you open to fractional or part-time engagements?

Accepted Answer

Yes — open to discussing scope, time commitment, and rates directly.

Question 15

What kind of ROI have you delivered?

Accepted Answer

€480K/year in savings at Infineon, €86K at OZON Tech, and an 11.63% metric uplift at onlineTours — see the Impact Dashboard for details.

Question 16

Have you built something from 0 to 1 before?

Accepted Answer

Yes — I built Infineon's Parking Guidance System from the ground up: backend, frontend, and the embedded computer vision, taking it from an idea to a live system used by 8,000 people.

Question 17

How comfortable are you wearing multiple hats?

Accepted Answer

Very — at WeDo.agency I shipped 9 different startup products, often solo, covering backend, frontend, infrastructure, and sometimes the AI/ML pieces too.

Question 18

How do you operate with ambiguous or incomplete requirements?

Accepted Answer

I ship the smallest version that tests the real assumption, then let actual usage tell me what to build next — that's how I scope every MVP.

Question 19

Are you open to equity as part of compensation?

Accepted Answer

Open to discussing it as part of the overall package, especially for a role with real ownership — happy to talk specifics directly.

Question 20

What's your risk tolerance for joining an early-stage company?

Accepted Answer

I've spent a year at WeDo.agency shipping fast for early-stage clients, so I'm comfortable with the pace — that said, I'm currently looking for a role I can commit to long-term.

Question 21

How do you move fast without breaking things?

Accepted Answer

Automate the guardrails instead of skipping them — I've gotten CI/CD pipelines down to under 10 seconds per deploy, which means shipping quickly without losing the safety net.

Question 22

How do you approach code quality and mentoring?

Accepted Answer

I set up automated quality gates early — linters, formatters, pre-commit hooks — so code review can focus on design instead of style, and I've mentored several developers along the way.

Question 23

Do you have production on-call experience?

Accepted Answer

Yes — I've built and operated services handling real traffic at Infineon and OZON Tech, including Kubernetes deployments monitored with Prometheus and Grafana.

Question 24

How do you approach architecture decisions?

Accepted Answer

Trade-off driven, documented as ADRs — see the Decisions page for real examples from past projects.

Question 25

Can I see your code or side projects?

Accepted Answer

Check the Skills page for an interactive breakdown of my stack, or Projects for full case studies.

Question 26

How do you decide when to refactor vs. rewrite?

Accepted Answer

I default to refactor — most systems don't need a rewrite, just the parts that changed most often cleaned up first. A rewrite only makes sense when the architecture itself is the blocker.

Question 27

How do you approach system design for scalability?

Accepted Answer

Start from real load, not a hypothetical one — at OZON Tech I designed a Go microservice that searches 200M warehouse items in under 5 seconds using ElasticSearch and Kafka, load-tested before it ever shipped.

Question 28

What's your approach to incident response?

Accepted Answer

Fix first, understand second, prevent third. I've run production on-call at Infineon and OZON Tech with Kubernetes deployments monitored through Prometheus and Grafana, so the goal is catching a regression on a dashboard before a customer does.

Question 29

How do you evaluate whether to adopt a new technology?

Accepted Answer

I prototype it against a real problem I already have, not a toy example — that's how RAG, LangChain, and MCP earned a place in my stack, and how plenty of other tools didn't.

Question 30

How do you handle disagreements about technical direction?

Accepted Answer

Write the trade-offs down as an ADR and let the data settle it where possible — most 'disagreements' turn out to be unstated assumptions about priorities.

Question 31

What's your testing philosophy?

Accepted Answer

Tests should catch the failure modes that actually happen in production, not just hit a coverage number — unit tests plus load tests were what let me ship the OZON search service with confidence at 200M-item scale.

Question 32

How do you use AI in your development workflow?

Accepted Answer

Claude Code paired with TDD — tests are what make AI-generated code trustworthy, not just fast. I'm also familiar with structured agentic workflows like GSD and Superpowers for keeping AI-assisted development disciplined.

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