- LocationCalifornia, USA
- TimezonePacific, UTC-07:00
- UpdatedMonday, Jul 20, 2026
I design systems, define technical direction, and lead engineering teams through complete delivery cycles — from the first architecture decision to live production at scale.
19+ years of end-to-end ownership across government, media, and tech. I take products from 0 to launch and build the teams that sustain them.
About me
Tech Lead / Principal Engineer with 19+ years building and running production systems across government, media, and technology. I set technical direction, design architecture from scratch, and stay accountable through the full delivery cycle — from the first design decision to the system running in production.
- 10+ production systems shipped solo or as technical lead — architecture, backend, frontend, and infrastructure
- Led engineering teams of 5–15 people across government, media, and enterprise software
- Made the stack, architecture, and CI/CD calls that teams live with for years
- Shipped in regulated, high-stakes environments: federal government platforms, high-traffic media, IoT hardware
Work Activity
Real-time work activity: contributions, repositories, languages, and commit history. Open source involvement and coding patterns visualized.
GitHub Stats
Commit Activity
Last 52 weeksProduction Projects — Misha
Personal projects built and run end-to-end, from embedded IoT hardware to cloud platforms. Each is live in production and reflects real architectural trade-offs, not portfolio filler.
Automated Home Observatory
Built a fully automated observatory from scratch, tying Raspberry Pi, Arduino, and Python together into one control system for remote telescope operation and image capture. The web layer handles real-time data streaming, user auth, and a celestial events calendar. Solo project — hardware interface, automation engine, backend API, and frontend all built and run by me.
IoT Weather Station
IoT system built in-house: custom Arduino firmware for multi-sensor data collection, a REST API serving live and historical readings, and a dashboard for visualization. Feeds into the observatory pipeline as a safety gate — imaging sessions pause automatically when conditions are bad.
Asteroid Proximity Tracker
Data platform pulling from NASA's NeoWS API to track near-Earth asteroid approaches. Surfaces close-approach windows, velocity, estimated diameter, and orbital paths as a live dashboard — turning raw orbital mechanics data into something readable.
Geo-Discovery Platform
Geo-discovery platform on a microservices architecture (Next.js, PHP, MySQL) with interactive map exploration, user-generated content, photo uploads, and a gamified reputation system. Designed the data model, defined the service boundaries, and built it end-to-end from schema to deployment.
Astronomy Outreach Channel
Science-accurate astronomy channel covering celestial events, astrophotography, and observational data for a growing audience. Run solo — editorial pipeline, production workflow, and community engagement — as a long-running side project outside of software.
CubeSat Sim
Simulation platform for CubeSat satellite systems on Raspberry Pi. Models onboard software as independent Python services (OBC, EPS, ADCS, Payload, Telemetry) communicating over MQTT, mirroring a real spacecraft bus. Runs against real hardware sensors or mocked dependencies for local development.
CubeSat Ground Station
Cloud ground station for CubeSat telemetry visualization. Ingests telemetry every 30 seconds, stores it in MySQL, and renders it as interactive ECharts dashboards for EPS, ADCS, Payload, and system health. PHP/CodeIgniter 4 API with a React/TypeScript frontend on Redux Toolkit.
Engineering Experience — Misha
19+ years of technical leadership across government, media, and technology — from greenfield architecture to production, across 9 roles in 3 industries.
- Sep 2021 — Present4 yrs 10 mos
Lead Software Engineer
CurrentTechnical lead for a large-scale React/TypeScript application, setting architecture and engineering standards for a distributed team. Designed the component architecture now used org-wide. Took automated test coverage from near-zero to 85%+ (unit, integration, visual regression) with Jest, Playwright, and RTL. Built the CI/CD pipeline with SonarQube quality gates, replacing manual regression testing and shortening time-to-merge. Added API simulation tooling and a dedicated test environment that cut frontend iteration time. Coordinate with UI/UX, backend, and QA leads on component and API contracts, and run regular code reviews to keep quality consistent across the team.- FrontendJavaScriptTypeScriptReactReduxSASSTailwindCSSStorybook
- BackendRestAPIGoPostgreSQL
- TestingPlaywrightJestRTL
- InfrastructureDockerGitJenkinsSonarQubeLinuxGitHubActions
- Frontend
- Mar 2018 — Sep 20246 yrs 6 mos
Lead Software Engineer
Part-time, concurrent engagement alongside the Lead Software Engineer role above. Ran the full technical lifecycle for a portfolio of high-traffic WordPress platforms serving multiple media organizations under strict performance SLAs. Built custom PHP modules and MySQL schema changes to keep the sites reliable under peak load. Managed the VPS infrastructure stack — provisioning, security hardening, patch cadence, and disaster recovery. Built SEO tooling and social distribution integrations that grew audience reach across platforms. Designed custom themes balancing editorial UX with page performance. Sole point of contact for infrastructure and application issues across the portfolio.- FrontendJavaScriptjQueryTypeScriptHTMLCSS
- BackendPHPMySQL
- InfrastructureLinux
- CMSWordPress
- Frontend
- Jul 2021 — Nov 20221 yr 4 mos
Senior Frontend Developer
Contract role, concurrent with the Lead Software Engineer position above. Built a centralized QA portal giving engineering leadership visibility across 36 microservices for the first time. Built a Bitbucket integration that automated project data extraction, replacing a manual process. Wrote automated UI test suites for 36+ microservices from scratch using React Testing Library, Jest, and Playwright. Built a microservice for real-time test telemetry and an Allure aggregation plugin consolidating quality metrics into one dashboard. Extended CI/CD pipelines org-wide with quality gates and coverage thresholds. Led code review standards and contributed to accessibility testing practices.- FrontendJavaScriptTypeScriptReactReduxSASSSemanticUI
- BackendRestAPI
- TestingPlaywrightJestRTL
- InfrastructureGitJenkinsLinux
- Frontend
- Aug 2016 — Jul 20214 yrs 11 mos
Engineering Team Lead
Led a cross-functional engineering team building systems for federal and regional government under strict compliance requirements. Built a payment integration with state banking infrastructure for a federal cashback program used by millions of citizens at launch. Built a COVID-19 monitoring and compliance system for the Orenburg region, integrated with federal APIs and driving real-time SMS notifications at regional scale. Took a citizen-government issue reporting portal from zero to production; it became the primary channel for municipal reporting in the region. Designed microservice infrastructure for e-document integration and regulatory compliance. Set technical direction across several concurrent government contracts, running delivery via Agile/Scrum while managing engineers, QA, and external stakeholders.- FrontendJavaScriptTypeScriptReactReduxCSSHTMLSemanticUI
- BackendRestAPIPHPMySQLPostgreSQLPythonCodeIgniter
- InfrastructureGitDockerJenkinsLinux
- Frontend
- Apr 2015 — Aug 20161 yr 4 mos
Full-Stack Developer
Built a distributed news aggregation platform with a high-throughput database layer to ingest and serve content from multiple live feeds under sustained load, including the UI and a banner ad integration API. Designed distributed schemas for high-load ingestion. Built APIs for telecom payment processing and a full billing system with accounting, subscriber management, and payment statistics dashboards. Set up CI/CD pipelines and backup infrastructure across all project environments. Wrote system documentation for administrators and solution architects.- FrontendJavaScriptjQueryCSSHTML
- BackendRestAPIPHPMySQL
- InfrastructureGitLinux
- CMSDrupalJoomlaWordPress
- Frontend
- Oct 2013 — Apr 20151 yr 6 mos
Full-Stack Developer
Designed the PostgreSQL spatial database for a production GIS system, optimized for large-scale spatial queries. Built the core GIS application in PHP/Yii and the mapping subsystem in Delphi with a JavaScript/jQuery frontend. Led the migration from a monolith to microservices, enabling independent deployment and better scalability. Implemented role-based access control. Owned deployment on client infrastructure and wrote developer and end-user documentation.- FrontendJavaScriptjQueryCSSHTML
- BackendRestAPIPHPYiiMySQLPostgreSQLDelphi
- InfrastructureGitLinux
- Frontend
- Jul 2011 — Jun 201211 mos
Full-Stack Developer
Built a custom CMS from scratch in PHP/Laravel, including the admin interface, a PostgreSQL data layer, and a modular extension system for news, articles, and user management. Delivered client websites on the platform and built third-party integrations for hotel and flight booking services. Prototyped client MVPs under tight deadlines and provided post-launch technical support.- FrontendJavaScriptjQueryCSSHTMLBootstrap
- BackendPHPMySQL
- InfrastructureGitLinux
- Frontend
- Oct 2008 — Jul 20112 yrs 9 mos
Systems & Network Engineer
Designed and deployed LAN infrastructure for residential and commercial clients, from cable and fiber splicing to switch configuration and Linux server administration. Managed subscriber servers with a focus on uptime, security hardening, and incident response. Installed alarm and video surveillance systems. Built a custom billing system in Delphi that automated invoicing and payment reconciliation — a self-initiated project that replaced a fully manual process.- BackendPHPMySQL
- InfrastructureGitLinuxCentOS
- Backend
- Jun 2005 — Dec 20072 yrs 6 mos
Hardware & Systems Technician
Assembled, configured, and maintained desktop systems and office equipment for commercial clients. Installed LAN cabling and configured network switches for performance and traffic management. Built a custom billing application in Delphi on my own initiative — my first real software project, and the reason I moved into engineering full-time.
Technical Skills — Misha
These are measured by systems shipped and teams unblocked, not years accumulated. A candid read on where I operate at full capacity: architecture decisions, full-stack delivery, and the complete engineering lifecycle.
Frontend Engineering
Backend & APIs
Infrastructure & DevOps
AI & Automation
Get In Touch
I'm always open to discussing new projects, creative ideas, or opportunities to build something great.