Denis Evteev

Beautiful accounting software

I am thrilled to be joining Xero this year and becoming part of this multinational company that offers simple yet comprehensive accounting software that makes it easier for millions of people in more than 180 countries around the world to run and grow their small businesses.

The next exciting chapter of my career awaits!

Scalable and performant containerised IT ecosystem

In a Sydney-based company specialising in retail and wholesale order fulfilment for customers across 35 countries, I had the privilege of leading a team of six individuals. Together, we undertook an ambitious project of building an entire IT ecosystem from the ground up, leveraging the power of open-source technologies and cutting-edge cloud solutions. It was an exciting journey of collaboration, innovation, and hard work, resulting in the successful establishment of a robust and scalable cloud system.

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A Sydney-based company needed a custom order fulfilment platform that leveraged a ready-made open source CMS application at its core. The challenge was to ensure the system could handle orders of varying sizes, from a few items to hundreds, while providing customers with a seamless and efficient order management experience.

As a platform architect, I led a team of four engineers, a designer, and a tester to design, implement, and optimise the entire ecosystem. We developed a comprehensive solution consisting of over a dozen modules, tools, and services, all orchestrated to work harmoniously — from local development environments to complex service and network meshes running in the cloud.

To tackle the project, our team and I came up with a solution that transformed WordPress, a monolithic open source CMS, in a distributed event-driven microservices platform with each service running into a dedicated Kubernetes container, ensuring scalability, flexibility, and resilience. We also prioritised aligning our solution with the AWS Well-Architected framework, guaranteeing top-notch performance, reliability, security, and cost-efficiency.

Our modular system design proved to be the key to solving the scalability and performance challenge. We implemented autoscaling tasks that seamlessly adjusted the number of running server and database nodes based on demand. By outsourcing resource-intensive background tasks to dedicated compute-optimized instances, we ensured the public website remained fast and responsive at all times.

Accomplishments

• Architected and implemented multiple high-performing, fault-tolerant, secure, and cost-efficient GitOps solutions, leveraging Kubernetes clusters in AWS spanning multiple availability zones.
• Successfully decoupled a monolithic platform into a distributed event-driven microservices system, resulting in a significant enhancement of its reliability and achieving performance improvements exceeding 1,500%.
• Empowered the company developers to efficiently and securely build, test, deploy, and monitor their software, all while minimising infrastructure operating costs.

Multiplatform mobile application

During my tenure as a contractor for a dynamic logistics company based in Lisbon, I took on the challenge of architecting and developing a multiplatform inventory management mobile application. To ensure optimal performance and scalability, as well as seamless integration with the company's existing cloud services, I crafted a robust cloud infrastructure as the application's backbone. The resulting solution not only streamlined the company's inventory management processes but also paved the way for enhanced efficiency and productivity.

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Always intrigued by mobile applications and services, I took a leap to expand my skills as a mobile application platform developer. As a contractor, I fulfilled a project for a logistics company based in Lisbon, where I architected the back-end infrastructure and helped build a CI/CD pipeline for a mobile app to streamline inventory management for their warehouse staff.

Collaborating with the company's in-house software engineer, we crafted a mobile solution boasting native-level performance provided by the Flutter framework, near real-time data synchronisation powered by Google Cloud, live status alerts through push notifications, and seamless integration with the company's existing AWS cloud services via SQS and SNS. By utilising other AWS services, we built an efficient and reliable software integration and deployment process, and ensured comprehensive observability and security of the entire platform.

The impact was substantial. The new mobile application empowered the company's workforce to effortlessly access and update inventory data, saving them several hours per shift. Additionally, the improved CI/CD pipeline significantly enhanced the efficiency of the software testing and deployment stages, leading to considerable cost savings for the company.

Accomplishments

• Integrated the application seamlessly into the existing backend platform by leveraging cloud-backed message brokers and event queues.
• Streamlined the deployment process for the contractor developers, allowing them to work more efficiently and leading to significant cost savings for the company, amounting to thousands of euros on a monthly basis.
• Optimised database and storage solutions, resulting in a substantial improvement in the inventory management process. Achieved the fulfilment of read requests in less than 500 ms for the 95th percentile.

Cloud-powered IT platform

As the lead software engineer of a team of five talented individuals, I helped a young company from Auckland to architect, develop, and maintain a white-label cloud platform. From its humble beginnings as a basic CMS system, the platform evolved into a sophisticated cloud-based solution, ultimately emerging as the go-to platform for clients worldwide seeking subscription-based nutrition plans and workout sessions. Within a few years, this platform has garnered an impressive user base, serving hundreds of thousands of customers each month.

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A company from Auckland sought a bespoke IT solution to cater to its clients spanning New Zealand, Australia, Europe, the US, and Canada. Their vision was to establish a comprehensive white-label cloud platform that offered subscription-based nutrition plans and workout sessions for a nominal fee.

To fulfil this project, I architected a modular multi-tier solution with a strong emphasis on scalability, performance, and security. Working alongside a talented team of two back-end developers (later joined by a front-end developer and a designer), we constructed a robust and fault-tolerant system. Our implementation included an automated pipeline deployment process, real-time monitoring and alerting for heightened observability, and the deployment of core components across multiple availability zones, ensuring a 99.99% service availability guarantee for all our clients.

Throughout the years, our solution has consistently demonstrated its resilience and scalability, effortlessly handling constantly growing volumes of traffic. This steadfast performance has empowered tens of thousands of customers from around the world to access the platform daily, generating millions of dollars in annual revenue for the company and its clients.

Accomplishments

• Designed a performant and robust multi-tier cloud-native white-label platform catering dozens of wholesale partners and serving over 170,000 retail customers around the globe.
• Ensured a 99.99% guaranteed SLA for the company’s partners by implementing fault-tolerant solutions, developing efficient disaster recovery strategies, and adhering to observability best practices.
• Continuously optimised and enhanced the infrastructure design and CI/CD toolkit, enabling the company to generate more than $15m of revenue in several years.

Fast and secure RESTful API

As a key member of a dynamic team of three engineers, we successfully designed and implemented a robust RESTful API for a company specialising in mobile workforce tracking solutions, serving a vast customer base across New Zealand, Australia, the UK, and the US. By leveraging this API, the company established a unified communication infrastructure for their suite of mobile applications, enabling seamless and secure data transmission and providing powerful integration capabilities for its clients.

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In my first full-time role after graduating from the Auckland University of Technology, I joined the rapidly growing company GeoOp (now Geo Ltd) as an API developer. GeoOp specialised in mobile workforce tracking solutions, serving a wide customer base in New Zealand, Australia, the UK, and the US. With the goal of developing native mobile applications for multiple platforms, including iOS, Android, and Windows Phone, it faced the challenge of establishing a unified communication channel between these applications and its existing on-premises back-end servers.

Working in a small yet agile team of three individuals (later expanding to five), we were responsible for designing and developing a performant and secure RESTful API service. Anticipating future requirements, we carefully crafted the API to accommodate GeoOp's mobile apps, as well as its front-end web app and various third-party integrations, each with their unique roles and data access requirements and restrictions.

Our team implemented an advanced automated deployment process, resulting in a significant reduction in production errors by nearly fourfold. This comprehensive solution empowered software engineers to build native mobile applications and, later on, a new web console, utilising the shared communication API. Consequently, the IT department experienced improved operational efficiency, allowing the company to allocate valuable development resources towards innovation and platform enhancements.

Accomplishments

• Built a unified API with modern OAuth authentication system and rich RBAC capabilities for the company’s mobile and web applications and its third-party integrations.
• Implemented an automated deployment process with comprehensive testing stages, resulting in a 72% reduction in production error rates.
• Improved operational efficiency by 16% by freeing up development and maintenance resources.

Early projects

During my university years, I worked as a freelance developer, focusing primarily on small-scale LAMP-like solutions, where I successfully completed numerous projects. This hands-on experience not only allowed me to apply my technical knowledge in practical settings but also familiarised me with the world of internet technologies, laying the foundation for my future expertise in major cloud platforms and their functionalities.

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As a student, my passion for web technologies drove me to put my knowledge into action from my very first year at university. One of my earliest ventures involved collaborating with a friend to develop custom modifications (mods) for IP.Board, a popular open-source web forum platform.

It didn't take long for me to realise that creating custom mods for open-source web software was not only enjoyable, but also in high demand among companies that were actively seeking these solutions to establish their online presence. Once I gained confidence in my skills, after about a year of learning and practicing, I seized the opportunity to freelance as a developer, offering my services in creating custom web solutions for clients.

Throughout my seven-year journey studying information systems and business at three different universities worldwide, I honed my software engineering skills by undertaking a wide range of projects, including mods, landing pages, and even personal and corporate websites. It was during this period that I also obtained my first professional certifications, further validating my expertise in the field.

Accomplishments

• Developed numerous plug-ins for open source platforms, interactive landing pages, simple websites, and content management systems.
• Gained invaluable hands-on experience by applying my knowledge into practice and significantly enhanced programming, UI/UX design, and communication skills.
• Earned my first professional certifications.