Andrii Popenko. Engineering Manager. Software Architect.

Contact information

Summary

Engineering Manager and Software Architect with 9+ years of experience building high-scale e-commerce systems. Led a team of 8 engineers on a platform processing 12,000+ orders/day. Architected a recommendations engine serving 40M+ queries/month at 99.99% availability. Combines deep technical expertise (TypeScript, React, Node.js, Python, ML) with proven leadership: hiring 20+ engineers, driving technical strategy, and delivering measurable business outcomes.

Core Competencies

Engineering Leadership · Software Architecture · Technical Strategy & Roadmapping · High-Load Systems Design · E-commerce Platforms · ML / Recommendation Systems · Team Scaling & Hiring · Cross-functional Collaboration · Performance Engineering · Agile / Scrum · Code Review & Mentoring · Stakeholder Management

Experience

  • [01.2024 - present]: Engineering Manager at “Aleph1”

    Location: Barcelona, Spain

    • Led a team of 8 engineers delivering features on a high-volume e-commerce platform processing 12,000+ orders/day
    • Architected a high-load recommendations service handling 40M+ queries/month at 99.99% availability with zero unplanned downtime
    • Designed and deployed multiple ML-powered recommendation models — Frequently Bought Together, Similar Products, Trend Forecasting, and Occasion-Based Personalization — driving a 40% increase in recommendation-attributed revenue
    • Developed a proprietary trend forecasting model from the ground up, applying Fourier transform analysis to time-series sales data across the full product catalog to surface emerging trends in real time
    • Scaled engineering team: hired 20+ engineers, conducted 200+ technical interviews
    • Drove RFC process, architectural decisions, and cross-team technical strategy
    • Owned incident response for production issues within team’s domain
    • Led AI adoption across engineering teams: ran workshops on coding agents and automation with Claude Code, establishing it as a standard development tool company-wide

  • [06.2020 - 01.2024]: Senior Software Engineer at “Aleph1”

    Location: Barcelona, Spain

    • Contributed to e-commerce platform growth from early stage to current scale
    • Resolved complex reliability, resilience, and performance challenges
    • Designed and built the React design system and component library
    • Conducted code reviews and mentored junior engineers

  • [05.2019 - 06.2020]: Software Engineer at “Shwartzcode”

    Location: Kyiv, Ukraine

    • Built pixel-perfect, accessible web interfaces; improved backend service performance
    • Implemented design system and component library for a call-centre application

  • [06.2018 - 05.2019]: Software Engineer at “Hasky”

    Location: Kyiv, Ukraine

    • Developed and maintained web services using React and Node.js

  • [01.2018 - 06.2018]: Software Engineer at “Mamontova Studio”

    Location: Kyiv, Ukraine — Built client websites using WordPress, PHP and TS.

  • [09.2019 - 11.2021]: Teacher of Programming at “Main Academy”

    Location: Kyiv, Ukraine — Taught HTML, CSS, JS, React; prepared students for their first engineering roles

  • [09.2016 - 06.2019]: Senior Teacher of Robotics & Programming at “Robocode”

    Location: Kyiv, Ukraine — Taught robotics and programming; led school curriculum as senior teacher

  • [06.2016 - 01.2018]: Neutron Physics Engineer at “SSTC NRS”

    Location: Kyiv, Ukraine — Calculations of neutron transients in the reactor core and spent nuclear fuel using Python and Fortran.

Technical Skills

  • Primary: TypeScript, JavaScript, React, Next.js, Node.js, NestJS, Python, ML (scikit-learn, TensorFlow, PyTorch)
  • Architecture: Microservices, high-load system design, REST, GraphQL, RabbitMQ, WebSockets
  • Infrastructure: AWS, Docker, Kubernetes, GitHub Actions, CircleCI
  • Databases: PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Redis, ElasticSearch, Neo4j, MySQL
  • Other: Git, Kibana, Logstash, Webpack, Astro.js

Education

National Technical University of Ukraine “Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute”

  • [09.2016 - 06.2018]: Master of Nuclear Power Engineering
  • [09.2012 - 06.2016]: Bachelor of Nuclear Power Engineering

Languages

English (professional), Ukrainian (native)