Mikhail Novikov aka freiksenet

Work experience

Staff Software Engineer, Tech Lead, Core Team, Gatsby Inc.

Jan 2019 -> Sep 2020

• Worked at the open source team, that is responsible for Gatsby framework
  
• As an IC Designed and/or implemented the following big changes to Gatsby Core:
  • Schema Customization v1 and v2 (API to manually define Gatsby’s GraphQL Schema, unblocked a big family of issues related to inconsistent data)
  • Materialization (layer that augments data store objects based on GraphQL resolvers, an internal refactoring that simplified database handling and querying code greatly and opened possibility for user access to it)
  • Incremental Builds Runner v1 (Gatsby Builder that powers Incremental Builds in Gatsby Cloud)
  • Components from GraphQL (an API to output React components from GraphQL layer, a way to smooth many sharp edges in Gatsby user API, for example related to images)
• Core Team Tech Lead in 2020
• As a Tech Lead, I led the following process changes within the team:
  • Lead clarifying code ownership and helped EM to organize core team into subteams (boats). This enabled moving to a sprint based process, as team became manageable in terms of size. In turn, that increased output and efficiency.
  • Created Core Technical Roadmap and worked with Core Leadership and Product Team to create team roadmaps and goals for Q2/Q3/Q4 of 2020. Previously there wasn’t a concrete roadmap and it was hard for Core team to have effect on what they are going to do. This greatly increased focus on the team and more features were shipped in Q2 comparing to Q1 or 2019.
  • Started process of sending weekly newsletter with team’s achievements to increase company-wide transparency
  • Organized Tech Lead sync meetings to synchronize on technical challenges with other team’s technical leadership
  • Was instrumental in facilitating cross-functional collaboration with other teams
  • Collaborated and guided Core Team and other team’s ICs to get new features into Gatsby Core, such as Unified Routes, Gatsby Recipes and Gatsby Admin

Conference organizer, TOSKA Osuuskunta / React Finland ry

Apr 2018 -> (ongoing)

React Finland and GraphQL Finland are community-organized conferences in Helsinki, Finland.

• Helped organize React Finland 2018, GraphQL Finland 2018 and React Finland 2019
• Volunteer coordinator for React Finland 2018
• Head Producer for GraphQL Finland 2018
• Sponsor coordinator and producer for React Finland 2019 and 2020/2021

CTO & Co-Founder, Functo Inc. (aka. Reindex Software)

Apr 2014 - Dec 2019

• Co-founded a consulting company, that pivoted into product company and then back to consulting company
• Held multiple GraphQL trainings and workshops
• Worked on Dagster a Python machine learning platform, architected and implemented first version of its Dagit UI in React and Typescript.
• Implemented Schema Stitching in GraphQL Tools library.
• Created Apollo Launchpad, the GraphQL server demo platform.
• Led the refactoring and development of the React frontend of WebRTC based video calling application
• Implemented Reindex Backend-as-a-Service, first GraphQL BaaS platform in Node.js. Worked on everything that a new startup needs, including documentation, examples/starters, checkout flow and public website
• Led frontend development of a mobile book store project implemented in Javascript and jQuery. Started effort to move the webstore to React
• Implemented a video inspection platform for police personal cameras. Backend was done using Python, Django and Django REST Framework, frontend with React and Javascript
• Participated in development of browser testing application in Coffescript and Node.js
• Led team that converted a legacy Django website to Gatsby website

Developer, Zenrobotics Ltd

Nov 2012 - Apr 2014

• Participated in development of an advanced robotic control system implemented in Clojure and Java
• Developed an API server for robot’s Web UI in Python
• Was heavily involved in customer deliveries; was team’s primary contact during several delivery projects

Senior Software Engineer, HDmessaging

Sep 2011 - Nov 2012

• Was leading developer working on the MagicWords contextual analysis backend framework, implemented in Python
• Was involved in hiring process and participated in higher level architectural discussions
• Was heavily involved in improvement of software configuration management process in Python and Ruby
• Worked on a web application implemented in Javascript and Backbone

Research Assistant, University Of Helsinki

Mar 2011 - Sep 2011

• Worked on PULS project - fact extraction from real-world news articles for multiple domains
• Was involved in adapting current English language Information Extraction system to work with Russian language (see publication), in general refactoring and reorganization of the project codebase, in server migrations and in several other smaller projects
• Project was done in Common Lisp

Web Development Consultant, Freiksenet Advanced Technologies

Sep 2008 - Apr 2014

• Consulted several companies, mostly in Web Development
• As a consultant to a startup, helped to develop their product based on Node.js, coffeescript and Python. Was involved both in frontend and backend.
• As a consultant to a company that specializes on tourism, was involved in all range of duties - from backend and database design to markup and deployment. Developed, deployed and supported the intranet customer management application, company website and a web shop. Work was mostly in Python, Django on backend and JavaScript on frontend.

Education

Bachelor of Business Administration, Haaga-Helia University of Applied Sciences

2007 - 2010