Valerii Riaboshapko

Spearheaded full-scale backend and cloud operations during a corporate spin-off, driving platform architecture, GPU cost optimization, and developer hiring.

• Cloud & Infrastructure Migration Management: Led the end-to-end cloud and system migration following a corporate spin-off. Mapped cross-service dependencies, established migration checklists, and successfully transferred cloud workloads to GCP and Firebase while managing complex Apple ID OAuth organizational migrations (handling Team ID transfers and credential re-mappings).
• DevOps & Infrastructure Automation: Built automated dev environment playbooks from scratch using Ansible for AWS provisioning (orchestrating PostgreSQL, MongoDB, WireMock, and partial production DB syncs). Managed network/server infrastructure and built resilient CI/CD pipelines to streamline deployment workflows.
• GPU Hosting & Cost Optimization: Evaluated CDN providers and infrastructure spending to optimize costs and latency. Spearheaded the migration to a specialized GPU hosting provider for AI generation workloads, saving several thousand dollars per month while reducing network latency by 200ms.
• Core Product & AI Integrations: Served as a hands-on lead architecting critical Kotlin/Coroutines backend services: in-game currency engine, authentication/OAuth, distributed locking mechanisms, and generative AI (image/video) integrations. Key contributor to the task queue architecture and Temporal orchestration rollout for AI pipelines.
• Team Ownership & Hiring Authority: Held full hiring ownership for backend engineering positions, conducting screening and technical interviews and making final hiring decisions. Successfully onboarded and mentored engineers, establishing strong engineering standards and high team integration.

Kotlin · Spring Boot (WebFlux) · Coroutines · AWS · Google Cloud Platform · Ansible · PostgreSQL · MongoDB · Temporal · Apache Kafka · WireMock · OAuth

Scaled and optimized a custom conversational engine while implementing multi-channel subscription service and streamlining test automation pipelines.

• Architecture & Performance Optimization: Maintained and enhanced a custom no-code conversational engine powering complex chatbot workflows built on Scala, Akka, and Akka Cluster. Consolidated distributed context-gathering services into a unified module, eliminating redundant network calls and safely decommissioning 3 dedicated servers without impacting system throughput.
• Monetization & Billing Systems: Engineered and owned the end-to-end subscription and one-time purchase billing microservices, seamlessly integrating with Stripe, PayPal, Apple App Store, and Google Play Billing APIs.
• Test Infrastructure & Developer Experience: Led a major refactoring of the integration testing suite, migrating dialogue test pipelines to Python and pytest with parallel execution, which reduced total CI/CD build runtimes by ~3x.
• Core Backend & Observability: Maintained analytics pipelines streaming data through Apache Kafka, and optimized state persistence using PostgreSQL, MongoDB, and Redis. Configured granular request throttling, parameterized logging, and continuous deployment pipelines.
• Technical Leadership & Hiring: Conducted 30+ technical interviews for backend candidates, evaluated candidate performance to inform hiring decisions, and led onboarding for new team members (delivering architecture overviews, mentoring during trial periods, and providing context on codebase decisions and best practices).

Scala · Akka · Akka Cluster · Python · PostgreSQL · MongoDB · Redis · Apache Kafka · pytest · Stripe · Google Play Billing · Apple App Store · PayPal

Built high-throughput threat intelligence storage and processing pipelines for enterprise cybersecurity telemetry.

• Threat Intelligence Platform: Engineered a high-throughput storage and processing system for cybersecurity threat intelligence, aggregating data on malware, suspicious IPs, phishing domains, and security indicators.
• Distributed Architecture: Leveraged Scala, Akka Cluster, Apache Kafka, and Apache HBase to ensure high availability, fault tolerance, and low-latency access to large-scale threat telemetry data.

Scala · Akka · Akka Cluster · Apache Kafka · Apache HBase

Engineered financial data aggregation services and automated tooling to support quantitative trading research.

• Quantitative Research Tooling: Designed and built a centralized market data aggregation system that pulled historical trade and order book data from multiple financial sources, validated data completeness, and exposed query endpoints for UI tools.
• Internal Engineering: Developed internal CLI tools and automation pipelines in Python to streamline quantitative analysis and algorithmic research workflows.

Python · Scala · ClickHouse · PostgreSQL

Scaled and managed the second-line technical support team, establishing hiring standards, onboarding frameworks, and Python training.

• Team Management & Onboarding: Managed and expanded the 2nd-line technical support team; conducted hiring, created onboarding materials, and mentored junior engineers on core system architecture and Python automation.
• Operational Excellence: Led escalated incident resolution and process improvements, significantly reducing mean time to resolution (MTTR) for critical client and infrastructure issues.

Handled advanced platform troubleshooting and developed custom Python automation tools for diagnostic workflows.

• L2 Troubleshooting & Diagnostics: Investigated complex infrastructure and trading issues by analyzing system logs, reproducing bugs, and managing database maintenance routines.
• Automation: Initiated the development of internal Python tooling libraries to automate manual L2 support workflows and log analysis.