LOOV CRM Platform
Migrated a 120+ person company onto a unified CRM platform and extended it with internal tools — turning a system of record into an operational platform.
120+ users60+ dashboards10 engineers
Igor Nikolaev.
CTO· VP of Engineering· Head of Engineering
I build engineering organizations, platforms, and processes for scale — making delivery predictable and effectiveness independent of team size through AI, no-code/low-code, and standardization.
Engineering leader with 8+ years of experience. I specialize in rapidly building teams and technology functions from scratch and delivering measurable results under resource constraints — typically increasing delivery speed ~3× with significantly smaller teams.
Approach
What I do
Four through-lines that have shown up in every role — from individual contributor to CTO.
01
0→1→Scale
Architecture, processes, data pipelines, and product platforms shaped from scratch and scaled further without losing manageability.
02
AI-driven SDLC
A complete software lifecycle wired with AI tooling, no-code / low-code, and automation — small teams ship the volume of large IT departments.
03
Resource-constrained delivery
Right-sized teams, clear contracts, no-bloat platforms. Predictable output even when budget and headcount are tight.
04
Engineering leadership
Hiring, growing engineers to senior grades, building cross-functional full-cycle teams, and setting the standards everyone reads from.
Impact
Outcomes that compounded
A few of the numbers that show up across roles when AI, standardization, and the right team shape line up.
3×
Faster delivery
Throughput10 vs 40–50
Team size vs. classical estimate
Team120+
Employees on the platform
Platform30k+
Users on the HR platform
Scale100k/wk
Personalized messages delivered
Comms20+
Microservices in MOEX onboarding
CoreSelected systems
Things I have shipped
A small slice — picked for variety and the trade-offs each one forced.
LOOV Data Platform / DWH
Near real-time DWH, customer profiles and segmentation, and a pipeline practice that turned analytics from reporting into a continuous business signal.
Near real-timeCustomer 360Segmentation
LOOV Mobile (employees & customers)
Two apps, one ecosystem: an operational interface for staff (tasks, knowledge base, standards) and a customer app with orders, prescriptions, warranties, and loyalty.
2 appsLoyalty + tiersKnowledge base
DodoIS HR Platform
Hiring, onboarding, and engagement for 30,000+ employees across 1000+ restaurants. Personalized comms reaching 100k messages a week, plus a merch store and employee contests.
30k+ users100k msgs/wk1000+ locations
MOEX Client Onboarding Core
Replaced a SQL-heavy legacy registration flow with an API-first microservices core. Hours-to-seconds onboarding for the exchange's clients.
20+ servicesHours → secondsAPI-first
IT Global Trading Systems
OTC trading bot with real-time market data, an early-market crypto-exchange backend, and a Xamarin trading app — built for high load and fast releases.
Real-timeHigh-loadMulti-platform
How I work
Operating principles
The non-negotiables I bring to every team.
Outcomes over output
Roadmaps are scored against business outcomes, not ticket throughput. Velocity that doesn't move a metric is waste.
Standardize, then automate
Process before tooling. AI and automation amplify whatever is underneath — make the underneath good first.
Tight loops
Short iterations, visible progress, fast feedback. Every week ends with something demoable and something learned.
Grow people, not just product
One-on-ones, deliberate stretch, transparent grade frameworks. The platform is people; people compound.
Experience
Selected work
Five roles, one arc — engineer → lead → CTO. Below, the work and the outcomes that mattered most.
LOOV — retail & medtech
Digital platform and internal products powering all operational activities for a 120+ person company.
- Formed and led the company's technology function, building robust IT infrastructure and a unified digital ecosystem for the business.
- Within the first year, executed a strategic migration to a unified CRM platform — consolidating operational processes and data into one workflow.
- Designed and launched a data platform with DWH delivering near real-time updates and 60+ management & operational dashboards.
- Established the data direction and pipeline practices, turning analytics from reporting into a continuous source of business value.
- Implemented customer profiles and segmentation, laying the foundation for personalized scenarios and a customer mobile app.
- Launched an employee mobile app as a unified operational interface: dashboards, tasks, knowledge base, standards, teams — extensible by design.
- Built internal tools that extend the CRM into a true operational platform.
- Launched a customer mobile app: orders, prescriptions, lenses, warranties, loyalty program, tiers, and bonus points.
- Stood up a separate technology track for the global direction, enabling rapid hypothesis testing for new business lines.
- Built a unified internal-process loop: task tracking, centralized knowledge base, and team collaboration tooling.
- All development was delivered by a 10-person team — a comparable scope under classical assumptions would require 40–50 specialists. AI tooling and modern approaches lifted delivery speed ~3×.
Dodo Engineering — DodoIS
HR platform for a network of 1000+ restaurants and 30,000+ employees.
- Grew from backend developer to Engineering Lead and HR-product owner.
- Led two cross-functional, full-cycle teams (development, testing, design) — accountable for delivery, quality, and people growth.
- Acted as technical leader: ran one-on-ones, hired engineers, grew several to senior grades inside Dodo.
- Designed and shipped COVID monitoring for staff on a tight deadline, sustaining operational processes through the pandemic.
- Designed and launched a large-scale HR platform for 30,000+ employees and high turnover — covering hiring, onboarding, and core HR processes.
- Built and scaled a personalized employee communications system: 30k users, 100k messages/week, with a flexible admin for branches and regions.
- Launched feedback tooling: regular pulse surveys, employee-satisfaction index, analytics on team and region health.
- Created internal products for motivation and engagement: merch store, employee contests, integrated into the Dodo ecosystem.
- Under tight resourcing, leaned into no-code / low-code — enabling fast launches and scalable iteration on platforms.
- Initiated and ran a systematic legacy migration in parallel with new feature delivery, with no business-process downtime.
Moscow Exchange
High-load services and client onboarding for the exchange's core infrastructure.
- Designed and implemented a new client-registration core for the exchange.
- Moved registration to an API-first, high-performance online flow — cutting time from hours to seconds.
- Implemented a microservices architecture (20+ services) with strict reliability, security, and scalability requirements.
- Refactored complex legacy logic end-to-end: decomposed thousands of lines of SQL into testable, maintainable services.
- Embedded data validation, integrity checks, and internal security loops into the registration flow.
- Delivered a stable launch with growing traffic and operational resilience for the exchange's key onboarding pipeline.
- Onboarded engineers and contributed to engineering standards for high-load fintech systems.
IT Global
Infrastructure and fintech projects for corporate clients.
- Designed and implemented a high-performance OTC trading bot: real-time market data, trading logic, fault tolerance.
- Built architecture and algorithms for trading systems in atypical market conditions — stability, extensibility, risk control.
- Fully implemented the admin layer of a financial-markets education platform (content, roles, access, user/permission management).
- Designed and shipped key modules of a major early-market crypto exchange: high load, fast releases, scalable backend components.
- Built an internal desktop app for derivatives trading (options & futures) with a focus on performance and reliability.
- Created a mobile trading app for the financial sector (Xamarin): client logic, trading-system integration, stable under load.
- Designed and shipped a mobile event-management application end-to-end — business logic, algorithms, scale-ready architecture.
- Across all projects: laid down architectural decisions for long-term maintainability, fast feature delivery, and system scaling.
Kilograpp
Mobile development studio.
- Picked up iOS (Objective-C, Swift) from scratch and started shipping commercial work in weeks.
- Built the core venue-search feature for a TripAdvisor-like travel app: geolocation, filters, autocomplete, maps and ratings.
- Contributed to a mobile app for theatre/opera visitors: schedules, tickets, hall navigation.
Education
National Research University of Electronic Technology (MIET)
Bachelor, Software Engineering
2015 — 2019
What people say
From people I built with
Notes from CEOs and investors I have worked alongside. Specific to what we built together, not endorsements.
Igor came in and built our IT function from scratch. In year one he fixed the pain of three parallel CRMs, got the processes running, and for the first time we saw the numbers of the business in one place. In year two he shipped two mobile apps, one for staff and one for customers.
In 15 years of investing I have met dozens of CTOs. Igor is the rare case of someone who can hold the frame of a ten-person team without turning it into tech debt. It is the skill of counting energy, not just releases.
Igor is the kind of CTO you hand a new product to and do not have to ping for status every two weeks. He counts money, he counts time, and he does not confuse the two. That is the actual asset you buy when you hire someone like him.
We worked together at Dodo while the HR platform grew to tens of thousands of users. Igor sees throughput before features and gets things to the state where the team can run them without him. That is a rare quality in our industry.
Writing
Recent writing
Long-form notes on building engineering organizations, platforms, and the systems behind them. Slow takes, not hot ones.
Contact
Let's talk
Hiring for a CTO or Head of Engineering role, exploring fractional engagements, or want a consultation on building AI-driven processes in software delivery: I'd love to hear from you.