After my previous experience as a General Manager and Director of Softwre Engineering  in a startup, my friends and I embarked on a new entrepreneurial journey, launching a B2C product called KiQ. KiQ was a smart gadget that wirelessly interfaced with your phone to alert you of calls and messages, calendar events, etc., and through which up-and-coming comedy writers could spread their jokes - all packaged in a fun, plush form. Our goal was to blend technology and personality to create a personal assistant that was both useful and enjoyable to have around. We created the product, started a Kickstarter campaign with a target of $50K and got $45K, but even though we had more than that to keep going forward we decided to shut down project. The most important lesson learned was to put a lot more marketing and advertising budget aside than for development itself, especially if dealing with the B2C market for the first time.

· Raised $250,000 from angel investors.

· Led team in developing hardware, addressing issues such as no suitable single chip which would care onboard both Wi-Fi and BLE. The solution that our team came up with was to have the BLE component always enabled and ready to react to events from BLE, accelerometer or a message from the power control unit, that would wake up the Wi-Fi module where the firmware of the main gadget was.

· Managed software development for backend and frontend to support essential features that include software firmware updates, audio file management, user preference customization, account management, and full gadget control.

· Established and maintained collaboration between hardware and software engineering teams.

· Designed and developed an iPhone multi page application with BLE and internet connectivity, push notifications, widget, social network integration, facilitating interactions/ controls for gadgets.

By March 2013, after 12 years in the outsourcing industry, where I successfully built and managed cross-functional teams of over 300 associates across multiple locations, I decided to explore the world of startups. I accepted an offer to lead an R&D team focused on developing a scalable, distributed platform infrastructure designed for high-volume, real-time processing across multiple geographies, ensuring high availability and low-latency performance (the product initially known as NiceMeeting and then Lintelus).
‍
Also, as General Manager, I was responsible for overseeing all aspects of business operations in Russia, including strategic planning, team leadership, and financial performance, ensuring we met the company’s goals efficiently. The product we built met all the requirements from the market and founders. However, the initial focus on real-time slide distribution for events and conferences, as well as its pivot to an online meetings platform, was not embraced by the market. The startup ran out of funding and had to close - though none of us could have predicted the demand such a product would face during the later onset of COVID-19.

• Oversaw all day-to-day operations, including engineering, HR, marketing, legal activities, and investor relations, maintaining continuity post $4M seed funding.
‍
• Built and led a team of top-tier software engineers to transform an MVP into a commercial product focused on scalability, fault tolerance, and performance optimization.

• Managed a complex project by breaking it into deliverable milestones, overseeing the development of functional specifications, and ensuring on-time product delivery.

• Successfully showcased the product at Cisco Live Milan 2014, where it was used by thousands of attendees.

• Led the NiceMeeting support team at multiple events across Europe, North America, and South America.

Following the successful transfer of Nortel teams to Avaya amidst the company’s bankruptcy, I was entrusted with new responsibilities. In addition to maintaining the growth of the Nortel teams, I took on a pivotal role with a new client, Networks In Motion (NIM). Given NIM’s strategic importance and the level of attention required, I transitioned my responsibilities for Avaya to another Director at MERA (now Orion Innovation) and focused entirely on building and leading a dedicated team for NIM. This allowed me to ensure the success of our partnership with NIM while continuing to drive team growth and innovation across the board.
At the same time, I continued to manage projects for smaller clients, ensuring their needs were met without compromising the attention required for larger initiatives. 

• Built, managed, and led more than 200 software engineers across teams working on Nortel (then Avaya) Voice Messaging, Contact Center, Multimedia Applications Server, Self Service, and Professional Services programs generating $8 million in cumulative revenue. I managed programs involving eight Nortel (then Avaya) R&D centers in the US, Ireland, Canada, and the UK.

• Was one of a group of key persons which made happen the transition of an over 350 strong software engineers from Nortel to Avaya through bankruptcy.

• Built and managed a scalable team of software engineering leaders supporting the development of mobile applications running on iOS, Android, Blackberry and J2ME platforms for real-time car navigation products supported by a Java backend. In total I led the team of 300+ person cross-functional engineering teams working for the new client and generating $12 million annually.

• Was responsible for building and managing teams for new clients across the Telecom, IIoT and Consumer Electronics verticals.

During this period of an active expansion, my teams became involved in the Enterprise Contact Center and Self-Service lines of business. Simultaneously, MERA (now Orion Innovation) was working towards achieving CMMI Level 3 certification, and I played a significant role in contributing to that process.

• Led the sustaining and development of a scalable, distributed platform infrastructures for high-volume, real-time processing across multiple geographies, ensuring high availability and low-latency performance.
‍
• Doubled my division’s revenue by developing a new line of business, launching operations for Nortel’s Contact Center and Self Service divisions.
‍
• Managed end-to-end software development and sustaining projects for Unified Messaging, Contact Center, and Self-Service solutions, utilizing both Agile and Waterfall methodologies, and contributing to achieving CMMI Level 3 certification.

During that period, I focused on growing and leading my Unified Messaging team. We expanded into a new line of business—Self-Service—and became actively involved in developing new products, contributing to innovation and enhanced Unified Communication solutions. Eventually, we evolved into a full-fledged Unified Communications team. As the world transitioned from PSTN to VoIP, I worked on building VoIP expertise within the team to keep us ahead of the industry’s shift.

• I kept hiring and onboarding engineers, building and managing the Orion team responsible for sustaining and developing Nortel Unified Communications projects.
‍
• Oversaw schedules, design, and code reviews throughout various phases of product development, providing technical direction and leadership as the go-to person for several key technologies.
‍
• We successfully reduced the backlog of bug reports by 15x, while simultaneously addressing high-priority issues 4.5x faster.
‍
• Led the development of an MVP to demonstrate the feasibility of transitioning Nortel Messaging from traditional telephony to VoIP.
‍
• Managed cross-functional hardware and software engineering team supporting the Meridian Mail platform.

I joined MERA (now Orion Innovation) as a sustainer for Meridian One PBX, but after six months, I was reassigned to the CallPilot unified messaging system. Nortel’s CallPilot was a complex platform with over 300 Dynamic Link Libraries (DLLs), each managing different functions such as voice processing, fax integration, email handling, telephony interfaces, IVR functionality, and Text-to-Speech conversion. Initially, I was part of a team of four software engineers sent to Canada for a tech transfer to address a backlog of 1,500+ change requests. Within a few months, I became the Team Leader, responsible for hiring and onboarding engineers, managing the team, and overseeing and making bug fixes.

• We successfully took over the responsibility for sustaining CallPilot, which allowed Nortel’s software engineers to concentrate on developing new products.

I was involved in developing Motorola’s first smartphone, which was based on the Symbian OS, featuring a full-size touchscreen and no physical keyboard. Unfortunately, Motorola decided to shut down the project as management believed that no one would buy a phone priced over $600, and the lack of a physical keyboard was seen as a disadvantage.

• Developed the peripheral devices management system using C/C++ programming languages.

I joined Alcor during my fourth year at Nizhny Novgorod State Technical University, marking my first experience working on a real-world project. Alcor was developing a real-time monitoring and disaster prediction system for gas and oil tanks and pipelines. The system utilized acoustic emission methodology, which detects high-frequency sound waves emitted by material deformation or crack formation in structures. My role was to develop a PCI-bus driver for gathering this critical data and controlling Acoustic Registration boards, which processed these signals to monitor the structural integrity and predict potential failures in real time.

• Developed and maintained a PCI-bus driver for Windows NT RTX, designed to gather data and control 16 PCI boards, each with 4 monitoring channels, using C/C++ and Assembler.
‍
• Simultaneously served as a Network Administrator, managing the local network infrastructure alongside development work.