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Sergei Iamskoi
Tech Lead / Senior Backend Engineer — PHP, Go · 15+ years

About Me

Tech Lead and Senior Backend Engineer with 15+ years of experience. PHP is my main language (Laravel, Yii, SpiralFramework), and I also design and build microservices in Go. I have frontend experience (Angular, Vue, jQuery) and I'm familiar with Java, C#, and Rust — the latter I use for WebAssembly modules. As a Tech Lead I combine hands-on development with technical leadership: I own architecture decisions, build engineering processes, run code reviews, mentor developers and take part in technical hiring. I have designed system architectures from scratch, including high-load, Uber-like systems in the b2b sector, and I own the full task lifecycle — from discussing the idea to delivering it (decomposition, estimation, implementation). When writing code, I practice OOP, apply design patterns where they fit, and follow SOLID/KISS/DRY.

  • Strong experience with PHP frameworks: Laravel, Yii 2/3, SpiralFramework
  • Designing and building microservices in Go
  • Building CI/CD platforms on GitLab, DevOps practices and delivery automation
  • Kubernetes, Docker and Helm: infrastructure design and maintenance
  • Code quality control: static analysis (PHPStan), Code Style, mandatory Code Review, automated testing
  • PostgreSQL and MySQL at the database-design level: complex queries, query optimization, transactions
  • Solid grasp of MVC, the web application life cycle, and how web applications and servers work
  • Team leadership: technical interviews, hiring, mentoring and setting technical standards
  • Linux server administration: nginx, php-fpm, deployment, monitoring and security hardening (SSH)

I learn new technologies quickly, usually on my own from documentation, and I enjoy discussing and solving complex problems to build genuinely useful products. I'm looking for a professional development team that loves its work and has a well-organized process — or a company that needs help building that process and a strong engineering team. Interesting startups are welcome too.

Education

  • 2004-2009

    Higher education (Specialist's degree)

    Povolzhskiy State University of Telecommunications and Informatics, Samara. Computer science, Computer software and automated systems

Experiences

Octopays (Cyprus)
Sep 2024 - now
Remote
Tech Lead / Senior PHP Developer
Responsibilities:
  • Technical leadership of a development team of 8 engineers, working closely with AQA, improving engineering processes and ensuring code quality.
  • Designing the architecture of new components and services, participating in technical decision-making.
  • Development and maintenance of backend applications on Laravel.
  • Design and development of individual microservices in Go.
  • Conducting code reviews, mentoring developers, and shaping the team's technical standards.
  • Participating in technical interviews and hiring of Backend developers and QA engineers.
  • Designing and maintaining Kubernetes, Docker and Helm infrastructure.
  • Adopting DevOps practices and automating software development and delivery processes.
Key achievements:
  • Accelerated delivery of new application versions by fully migrating from Bitbucket to GitLab and building a modern CI/CD platform with automated builds, testing and deployment.
  • Reduced release time and virtually eliminated manual operations by developing a Git-tag based automatic release system and fully automating application deployment.
  • Improved code quality and reduced the number of defects by introducing mandatory Code Style, Code Review, PHPStan static analysis and automated checks in GitLab CI.
  • Increased automated test coverage from 0% to 30% by designing and implementing unit and functional tests, significantly reducing regressions during development.
  • Improved code reliability by raising the PHPStan analysis level from 0 to 5 and integrating the checks into the CI/CD process.
  • Enabled early detection of production errors by introducing centralized monitoring with Sentry and embedding it into the project's maintenance process.
  • Sped up automated testing by implementing dynamic ephemeral environments (Review Environments) in Kubernetes for AQA, enabling parallel testing of multiple development branches.
  • Strengthened project security by adopting HashiCorp Vault for centralized secrets management, fully eliminating storage of sensitive data in repositories and adding automated leak detection with Gitleaks.
  • Improved supply chain security by integrating automated scanning of dependencies and Docker images for known vulnerabilities within CI/CD.
  • Substantially reduced server resource consumption and increased application performance by replacing PHP-FPM with RoadRunner, enabling more efficient resource usage and lower overhead for handling PHP requests.
  • Modernized the project's technology stack by migrating from Laravel 8 to the current framework version while preserving existing functionality and minimizing business risks.
  • Automated service deployment to Kubernetes by developing and maintaining Helm charts for applications and infrastructure components.
  • Made key architectural decisions, designing new services and developing individual components in Go for high-load and infrastructure tasks.
  • Solved the most complex technical challenges of the project, including performance optimization, refactoring of critical components and maintenance of complex business logic.
  • Developed custom WebAssembly components in Rust, performing reverse engineering of existing WASM modules and implementing secure data encryption mechanisms.
  • Raised the team's engineering maturity by introducing a mandatory Code Review process, unified development standards and automated quality control across the entire application lifecycle.
  • Contributed to building the development team by conducting technical interviews, evaluating Backend and QA candidates and taking part in hiring decisions.
SpiralScout (USA)
Nov 2021 - Aug 2024
Senior PHP Developer
HighLoad project with video processing. Main tasks:
  • New functionality, refactoring, optimization code and SQL
  • Update SpiralFramework from v1.x to 2.14 for few services
  • Update PHP version from 7.4 to 8.2
  • Added unit, functional and API test. Increased code coverage with tests from 0 to 95% for 8 services
  • Added gitlab pipelines with checkers: code statanalyze (PHPStan), CodeStyle, Security checker, running tests in pipes. Building docker images. Displaying code coverage in gitlab
  • Added Dockerfile with docker-compose for local development and gitlab pipelines, building docker images for all services in projects (>20)
TSUM (Russia)
Feb 2021 - Nov 2021
Senior PHP Developer
  • Improving the quality of the code with the help of pipelines
  • Added phpcodesniffer, phpstan
  • Improved test coverage
  • Updating the project from php 7.2 to php 8.1
  • Refactoring of various application modules
  • Implementation of new functionality
  • Code review
Wisebits (Cyprus)
2019 - Jan 2021
Senior PHP Developer
HighLoad project. I have split the monolith into microservice architecture. Added a service for advertising widgets using next technologies: Yii3, RoadRunner, RabbitMQ, Go, Clickhouse. It was: 4 servers and 500 RPS on each. Now: 1 server and > 5000 RPS.
Wowworks (Russia)
2015-2019
ITO
Creating a development department: backend team, frontend team, Android, QA
Duties:
  • Recruitment and interviewing
  • Communication with business, converting business needs into technical tasks
  • Decomposition of major tasks
  • Setting tasks for the team
  • Sprint planning
  • Project architecture development
  • Programming
  • Code review
Achievements:
  • Switching to Yii2 framework
  • Switching from PHP5 to new 7.0, 7.1 and then to 7.2
  • Switching from MySQL to PostgreSQL + Postgis, database
  • Creating RestAPI, switching to SPA (AngularJS)
  • Switching to atlassian services: Jira, Bitbucket (git), Confluence.
  • Implementation Vagrant for a team, then switching to Docker.
  • Connecting corporate email on Yandex.ru
  • Launching a mobile app on Android
  • Deployment of test benches.
  • Implementation of alert systems: Email, SMS, Android push (GMC, Firebase message), Telegram.
  • Integration with various services, including payment gateways: payinpayout, SolarStaff, Yandex.Kassa, QiwiBank,
  • Integration with DaData, SMS gateway.
  • Switching from FIAS (Federal Information Address System) to OpenStreetMaps + Yandex geocoder (this is connected with the move from MySQL to PostgreSQL)
  • Component for working with accounting and financial documents was created
  • Implementation of document templates for different organizations
  • Deployment CI Jenkins, creating Unit-test.
This is only part of tasks. Much work has been done in different directions, from management to development. I will say more in a interview.

Technologies: PHP 7.2, Yii 2, Composer, debian, nginx, php-fpm, memcached, Gearman, RabbitMQ, Angular, GIT, Jira, Confluence, Jenkins, Vagrant, Docker, Rest API, PostgreSQL, Postgis, Yandex.maps, Yandex.kassa, Codeception, Selenium Web Driver, Agile, Scrum, Planning Poker, Sentry
Wowworks (Russia)
2013-2015
PHP Developer
Working in the startup. Quick project implementation, its core and a main functionality. Building an address system based on FIAS\CLADR. Three persons participated in the development: backend developer, designer and template designer.
Technology stack: PHP5, MySQL, Bootstrap, JQuery, Mercurial, Redmine. The project was successfully launched in February 2014.
I-sys (Russia)
2012 - 2013
PHP Developer
Creating new scripts and supporting legacy systems. Database development on DBMS Oracle 10-11.
Megafon (Russia)
2010 - 2012
Software Engineer
I have been developing internal software products in PHP using MySQL DBMS and NTLM authorization.

Contact

+7 917 111 6465
[email protected]
Telegram
@siamskoi
LinkedIn
https://linkedin.com/in/siamskoi
Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/siamskoi

Pet projects

BMW WDS Online
https://bmwteka.com/
PHP editor online
https://php-fiddle.com/

Skills

PHP
Laravel
Yii 2 / Yii 3
SpiralFramework/CycleORM
CI/CD (GitLab)
Docker
Kubernetes / Helm
PostgreSQL
Go
Rust / WebAssembly
Vue
Beginner
Proficient
Expert
Master

Languages

English
Russian

Tags of technologies

PHP
Laravel
Go
Rust
Postgresql
Mysql
Redis
OOP
KISS
DRY
SOLID
Nginx
SpiralFramework
Yii2
RoadRunner
RabbitMQ
Nats
Memcache
Docker
Kubernetes
Helm
GitLab CI/CD
HashiCorp Vault
PHPStan
Sentry
DevOps
git
Jira
Confluence
RestAPI
Unit tests
Angular
Vue

Hobbies

Electronics
Robots
Programming
Aircraft
SmartHome
C++