Most of my career has been in marketing automation and messaging. In 2015 I built the Altcraft Marketing Platform from scratch and led its technology as CTO until 2025. It’s an omnichannel customer data platform that runs on-premise at large enterprises and as multi-tenant SaaS, with over 450 million customer profiles under management.
What I enjoy most is architecture and performance engineering of systems under heavy load, and building the engineering teams that run them.
This site is where I write about software and post photos from walks and trips: see the blog and the photo blog.
What I do now#
Since 2025 I’ve been a fractional CTO and technical consultant for Altcraft:
- Architecture, performance and AI-engineering advice for the platform.
- Load testing and capacity planning for enterprise on-premise deployments.
- Leading Altcraft Cloud SMTP, a sending service built on KumoMTA.
- Introducing AI-assisted engineering: LLM agents connected to the issue tracker, GitLab and browser automation via MCP.
Experience#
Chief Technology Officer, Altcraft · 2017–2025
- Owned architecture, technical strategy, roadmap and releases as the platform grew to 450M+ customer profiles.
- Led Development, QA and Operations: up to 35 people under three department heads, and covered product management too.
- Set up a Project/Product Management Office and handed it over to its own head.
- Delivered on-premise installations for enterprise clients in aviation, banking, insurance, telecom, e-commerce and media.
Lead Developer & Team Lead, Altcraft · 2015–2017
- Built the marketing-automation platform from scratch (Go backend, JavaScript frontend); co-inventor on a patent covering it.
Earlier · 2006–2015
- Software engineer for marketing-automation and email deliverability tooling at GMBDirect (2007–2015).
- Electronics and software prototyping for escape rooms; UI design and web development.
Skills#
| Backend | Go (10+ years), JavaScript / Node.js, Python, Bash; gRPC, HTTP/REST, SMTP/MTA, SMPP |
| Data & messaging | MongoDB, ClickHouse, PostgreSQL, Redis, RabbitMQ; storage tuning and query optimisation |
| Performance & ops | Load testing, bottleneck analysis, capacity planning; Linux, Docker, GitLab CI, Prometheus, Grafana, Zabbix, ELK |
| AI engineering | Agentic workflows: prompt and context engineering, MCP tool use, RAG, evaluation and agent loops |
| Leadership | Three departments, up to 35 people; strategy and roadmap; product management; standards, code review, team metrics |
Languages#
Russian (native) · English (professional working proficiency) · German (B1)
Contact#
- Email: cp1251@pm.me
- LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/cp1251
- Telegram: t.me/cp1251