Open to work · Remote-first · Novi Sad, Serbia

Vladimir
Golubev.

Tech Lead · Software Architect · Staff Engineer

Backend engineer → tech lead.
I’m the one fuzzy specs go to die.

Download CV (PDF) wladyspb85@gmail.com
13+ years shipping
backends
7K RPS peak load
on a single API
10yr since I drew the
stats core. Still live.
4 payment gateways
integrated end-to-end

Thirteen years of backend work — internal tooling, a CPA platform that peaked at 7,000 RPS, a stats core still humming in production a decade after I drew it on a whiteboard. These days I also run a solo indie game studio on the side, because the only thing better than designing systems for someone else is shipping one entirely yourself.

Looking for tech lead, architect or staff engineer — somewhere decisions and trade-offs matter more than volume of code, and AI-in-the-loop development is treated as the default, not a novelty.

Experience

2013 → now
  1. 2022 — Now Remote · 3y 10m

    Senior PHP Engineer at Quintegro

    Multiple projects across a collectible-car ecosystem — event-car rentals, US auction sites, an analytics platform, and an RV marketplace. Stepped in as tech lead on the rental product through its support tail.

    • Event-car rental marketplace — designed the seller-side deal-offer flow on the in-house framework (PHP, jQuery, MariaDB). Led the project as tech lead in its final support stretch.
    • Collectible-car analytics platform — came in to build the backend behind a data-heavy dashboard: subscription price-alert emails, currency converter, aggregated historical blocks by car generation and individual model, request proxy with auth replacement.
    • RV marketplace (microservices) — shipped automatic spammer blocking, async image optimisation, CRUD admin and notification flows. Built a local-dev stand for the whole microservice fleet so features could be tested cross-service. Rewrote the in-house DynamoDB library from raw arrays to a query-builder API. Owned release management on the orchestra.

    PHPjQueryMariaDBAWSDynamoDBOpenSearchCloudWatchTerraformMicroservicesTech leadRelease mgmt

  2. 2021 — 2022 SPb

    Senior Developer at Playkot

    Backend on a live mobile-game stack. Shipped multi-provider authentication with account linking, and optimised partial-load patterns over MongoDB for hot player data — load-aware feature work on a production game backend under traffic.

    PHPMongoDBNoSQLAuthGame backend

  3. 2020 — 2021 SPb

    Senior Developer at Rabota.ru

    Backend on one of Russia’s largest job boards. Built the in-cabinet notification service for customers, and moved client-cabinet features off the legacy codebase onto the new internal framework. Extended automated-test coverage across PostgreSQL-backed services along the way.

    PHPPostgreSQLNotificationsLegacy migrationTest automation

  4. 2015 — 2020 SPb · 5y 7m

    Lead PHP Developer at Smart Line

    Took a small PHP utility and grew it into offergate.pro — a multi-tenant CPA platform with two product surfaces, a ClickHouse analytics stack, and an API that peaked at 7K RPS. The stats core I designed in 2016 still runs in production today.

    From 2018, led a small backend team — code review, mentoring, automated-test rollout, architectural sign-off. Was an early adopter of ClickHouse and initiated team-wide moves to Vue.js and Docker. Integrated four payment gateways end-to-end (WebMoney, Platron, ePayments, bank131).

    PHP 7Vue.jsMariaDBClickHouseRedisCouchbaseDockerPaymentsTeam lead

  5. 2013 — 2015 SPb

    Full Stack Engineer at TAXOFT

    Designed, built and supported the software stack of a taxi-aggregator service end-to-end. First serious exposure to production scale and on-call.

    PHPJavaScriptHTMLCSSMySQL

Side studio

solo, end-to-end

No More Care

nomorecare.gg →

A one-person indie studio. Three roguelikes in flight. Design, architecture, code, infra, release — all me, with AI in the loop as a real-world stress test of agentic dev workflows.

Near release

Terminal Stake

Stock-market roguelike with procedural companies and hidden difficulty scaling. Pure terminal UI.

In dev

Incrememory

Fast auto-battler roguelike with deep upgrade mechanics.

In dev

Increvolution

Ecosystem-management roguelike with evolutionary mechanics.

Stack

what I reach for

Core

PHP 5–8System designMicroservicesAWSClickHouseTerraformDocker

Data

MySQLMariaDBPostgreSQLClickHouseMongoDBCouchbaseDynamoDBOpenSearchRedis

AI-augmented dev

Claude / Claude CodeChatGPTCopilotCursorCodexOpenClawAgentic frameworks

Quality & ops

PHPUnitBehat (BDD)Code reviewCloudWatchCI/CDLinux

Frontend (working level)

Vue.jsHTMLCSSJavaScript

Languages

Russian — nativeEnglish — C1

How I work

four bets I keep winning

Argue at design time.

I’d rather pick a spec apart for an hour than ship a bug for a month.

Right tool for the load.

Monolith or microservices, SQL or column store — I’ll defend whichever fits, not whichever’s in fashion.

AI as multiplier.

Copilot, Claude, ChatGPT every day. Own the agentic harness. Work for results, not for details.

Docs and reviews aren’t extra.

They’re part of the deliverable. They’re why your stats core lives ten years.

If you’re hiring

Roles

Tech Lead · Software Architect · Staff Engineer · IT Consultant.

Format

Remote (preferred) · Hybrid · On-site in Novi Sad.

Employment

Full-time, ideally B2B via my Georgian IE (individual entrepreneur).

Hard no

Projects that violate rights, anything fraudulent or harmful.

Reach me at wladyspb85@gmail.com or @WladySpb on Telegram.

Off-clock

1,000+ hours in Factorio. Cooking, travelling, sometimes with a tent. Cycling. Run and play tabletop RPGs (D&D and others).